Read LETTER XLII of Carry On, free online book, by Coningsby Dawson, on ReadCentral.com.

January 28th.

I’m back at the battery, sitting by a cosy fire.  I might be up at Kootenay by the look of my surroundings.  I’m in a shack with a really truly floor, and a window looking out on moonlit whiteness.  If it wasn’t for the tapping of the distant machine guns tapping that always sounds to me like the nailing up of coffins I might be here for pleasure.  In imagination I can see your great ship, with all its portholes aglare, ploughing across the darkness to America.  The dear sailor brothers I can’t quite visualise; I can only see them looking so upright and pale when we said good-bye.  It’s getting late and the fire’s dying.  I’m half asleep; I’ve not been out of my clothes for three nights.  I shall tell myself a story of the end of the war and our next meeting it’ll last from the time that I creep into my sack until I close my eyes.  It’s a glorious life.

Yours very lovingly,
CON

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