France, September 1st, 1916.

Dearest M.: 

Here I am in France with the same strange smells and street cries, and almost the same little boys bowling hoops over the very cobbly cobble stones.  I had afternoon tea at a patisserie and ate a great many gateaux for the sake of old times.  We had a very choppy crossing, and you would most certainly have been sick had you been on board.  It seemed to me that I must be coming on one of those romantic holidays to see churches and dead history only the khaki-clad figures reminded me that I was coming to see history in the making.  It’s a funny world that batters us about so.  It’s three years since I was in France the last time was with Arthur in Provence.  It’s five years since you and I did our famous trip together.

I wish you were here there are heaps of English nurses in the streets.  I expect to sleep in this place and proceed to my destination to-morrow.  How I wish I could send you a really descriptive letter!  If I did, I fear you would not get it so I have to write in generalities.  None of this seems real it’s a kind of wild pretence from which I shall awake-and when I tell you my dream you’ll laugh and say, “How absurd of you, dreaming that you were a soldier.  I must say you look like it.”

Good-bye, my dearest girl,
God bless you,
Con.