Mother, what should I answer to that! You would not understand, you could never realize it. And you shall never realize it. Was it bad, you ask.⁠—You, Mother⁠—I shake my head and say: “No, Mother, not so very. There are always a lot of us together so it isn’t so bad.”

“Yes, but Heinrich Bredemeyer was here just lately and said it was terrible out there now, with the gas and all the rest of it.”

It is my mother who says that. She says: “With the gas and all the rest of it.” She does not know what she is saying, she is merely anxious for me. Should I tell her how we once found three enemy trenches with their garrison all stiff as though stricken with apoplexy? Against the parapet, in the dugouts, just where they were, the men stood and lay about, with blue faces, dead.

“No Mother, that’s only talk,” I answer, “there’s not very much in what Bredemeyer says. You see for instance, I’m well and fit⁠—”