packed with music for a more hellish orchestra
than you can remotely imagine. The first few bars are enough to drive
you nearly frantic. It's unholy. It seems to split your head and
tear your ears out of their sockets. Can you understand a noise that
hits you? Hits unbearably, and then again. Crashes on to you. Bangs your
bones out of your skin, till you feel dazed and sick.

Still the lorries go by.

[Illustration: FRICOURT CEMETERY
The moon and some signal lights over FRICOURT. LA
BOISELLE just over the hill. French crosses all bent and twisted.
The little chapel still standing.]

_August 3._

[Sidenote: GUNS AT FRICOURT]

I hear the General doesn't like Swallow, so there's a good chance of his
returning. When you get angry with Swallow, he loses control of his legs
altogether, and they all fly about in every direction. He is quite like
Rinaldo in character,--not so perpetually fidgety, but as nervous, and
more easily frightened. Jezebel is showing her worth now like a Trojan.
She knows she has to make up for the loss of Swallow (whom I think she
rather misses). She is behaving splendidly. She is blatantly well, and
obeys all orders like clockwork; never tired; always hungry--a model.
The other mare, Moonlight, a dark brown, seems to be somehow exhausted.
I think she has had a very hard time of it, and has been wounded in the
foot. Her foot is all right now, but she seems to have no life left in
her. The war has utterly beaten her. Hunt is grazing and grooming and
petting her all day. So she may pick up. At present she is somehow
rather pathetic. She was with the Indian cavalry before she got
wounded. And then she went to a veterinary hospital. She is well made,
and may possibly brighten up. Hunt declares that she has "lost all her
courage." I'm glad I'm not a horse.

_August 5._

This is such an amazing country and in such an amazing condition. I
could collect a Harrod's Stores in a day--interesting and useful things,
too. But it's impossible to carry things about. One daren't overload the
horses, and one daren't overload the transport. Both are so heavy laden,
as it is.

The signal job is quite interesting, really, and the Colonel gives me an
absolutely free hand.

Jezebel and Co. are driven distracted by the horse-flies. I took Jezebel
into a stream to-day, but she started to sit down! So the flies must
just bite, I fear. Large grey brutes.

Hunt made me laugh so last night. I was looking round