The Wasted Generation

August, 1916 I am thirty this day, the twenty-ninth of August, 1916. The guns are roaring along the Somme front. Another great attack is on. The gray waves are passing over the top for the thousandth time and, for the thousandth time, hope is in the air once more. I feel it in the sudden optimism of the daily bulletin, in the groups in the market-place, in the little knot of evacu s, here in a Savoyard courtyard, basking in the sun and studying the winding line of pins on the yellowed map of the front. "Brigadier David Littledale, L gion Etrang re, Croix de Guerre, wounded at Verdun, March 5th, shell wound in the shoulder and the leg, shell-shock and gangrene. Entered Val de Grace, March 21st, evacuated on Chamb ry, July 10th, 1916." The record used to hang at the foot of my bed beside the fever chart and the record of operations. From Chamb ry, here into a rest area, to put on flesh again, to quiet my jumping nerves and to fatten up for the return to the front. To-day I have no desire to hasten that return. I write it down frankly, -as I intend to keep honesty with myself and my impressions. There are other times when I feel the tug and fret to be back. It is my mood to-day, as war is a succession of unrelated moods.