haven't
got to stand anything that you haven't stood gives you no end of a pull.
Honestly, I don't believe I could have faced them if it wasn't for that.
So that _your_ morale's the better for it as well as theirs. You know,
if you're shot down this minute it won't matter. The weediest Tommy in
your Company can "carry on."

_We_'re a funny crowd in my billet all risen from the ranks except my
Senior. John would love us. There's a chap who writes short stories and
goes out very earnestly among the corpses to find copy; and there's
another who was in the publishing business and harks back to it, now and
then, in a dreamy nostalgic way, and rather as if he wanted to rub it
into us writing chaps what he _could_ do for us, only he wouldn't; and
there's a tailor who swears he could tell a mile off where my tunic came
from; and a lawyer's clerk who sticks his cigarette behind his ear. (We
used to wonder what he'd do with his revolver till we saw what he did
with it.) They all love thinking of what they've been and telling you
about it. I almost wish I'd gone into Daddy's business. Then perhaps I'd
know what it feels like to go straight out of a shop or an office into
the most glorious Army in history.

I forgot the Jew pawnbroker at least we _think_ he's a pawnbroker--who's
always inventing things; stupendous and impossible things. His last idea
was machine-howitzers fourteen feet high, that take in shells exactly as
a machine-gun takes in bullets. He says "You'll see them in the next
War." When you ask him how he's going to transport and emplace and hide
his machine-howitzers, he looks dejected, and says "I never thought of
_that_," and has another idea at once, even more impossible.

That reminds me. I've seen the "Tanks" (Nicky's Moving Fortresses) in
action. I'd give my promotion if only he could have seen them too. We
mustn't call them Fortresses any more--they're most violently for
attack. As far as I can make out Nicky's and Drayton's thing was
something between these and the French ones; otherwise one might have
wondered whether their plans and models really did go where John says
they did! I wish I could believe that Nicky and Drayton really _had_ had
a hand in it.

I'm most awfully grieved to hear that young Vereker's reported missing.
Do you remember how excited he used to be dashing about the lawn at
tennis, and how Alice Lathom used to sit and look at him, and jump if
you brought her her tea too suddenly? Let'