p.

2.
Thursday - 24 July.There was no peace for me yesterday - it
was 10.0 o'clock when I finished working & began to write
to you - & at 10.30 I had a telephone call, which kept
me working for another hour. Today, I have beenat
work from 7.0 this morning, until 6.0 o'clock. And
at 8.30, the Sgs are giving a smoking concert, to
which I, & my officers, have been bidden. It is
really remarkable, the way my time passes, & the odd
collection of jobs & events which go to make up my day.
It seems a funny way for me to be helping to win
the war, & to have came all this way, away from
you, just to do this. I simply cannot avoid feeling
fed up & disgusted at times, having thought of myself
for some time now, as being reasonable tough. And
so far I haven't seen a German, or a dead man of
any kind. But I suppose somebody has to do this job, &
I have promised you before that I will never take any
active steps to get into the fighting. And it all has
the enormous compensation of practically ensuring the
certainty of my return to you, complete & unharmed.
But I sometimes ask myself am I man or mouse.
I hope you never do, my darling. It would have been
so easy yesterday to have told that short arsed little
runt of a Brigadier that I had not come out
here & left my wife, just to keep a barracks clean,
& supervise brassing up a cook house, nor was I
particularly interested in it.
Talking of being tough, my blasted tendons Achilles, have
gone again, on account of the PT. The one which
was operated on, slightly, the other one much more