Our lives depend on strategies, on strategies and also irresponsible and embarrasingly well educated generals, who still seem to think of this slaughter as of a welcome release from a decadent existance. The 29th Division are waiting for us and I fail to see the point of this codswallop about the wire being cut, when it isn't!?! One would think we'd have the advantage of the night on our side at least, but no! A generation of young men, to which I belong. must march in daylight like slow approaching targets up hill oblivious to the suicide they are commiting. Faith pushes them, like it pushed inocent Tess Durbeyfield into Alec violent posession. We all shall become less inocent against our will tommorrow“
He paused, unable to continue, wiping a bead of nervous sweat from just below the point where his brown hair began to grow on his forehead. Putting his pen down he stood up, knocking over a glass, that still had the traces of dried golden whisky, from the improvised bookshelf that hung low over his bed. The fragile transparent solid cracked as it hit the floor. Gray automatically swore and disposed of the pieces, cutting a finger as he did so. He took out his cigarette case from it's usual pocket, lit the last one remaining and inhaled the familiar, appealing and reassuring poison of the tobacco, feeling the welcome numbness disperse through the veins in his once youthful body.
The solitude in which he performed this ritual, though unusual for him. Satisfied his need for escapism. The smell lingered in his well shaped moustache as he went back to his entry and wrote;
“ Barclay is barking mad to have agreed to this; either that or as short sighted as Haig or Rawlinson. Remarkable what rank can do to a character, although I doubt that he was less ignorant in the past. He just doesn't seem to realize that we're not playing a game and that he's not commanding toy armies, but young men of flesh and red hot blood, who will die while he drinks ruby wine in a peaceful garden. “Dinner at Beaupaume” indeed! I am sorry for the men he's in charge of, who understand just what an abomination he is. As much as I enjoy a good meal, I don't think that I would take much pleasure in a “victorious” dinner at the cost of half my country. I would rather continue sharing my rations or my favourite walnut cake that Joyce sometime sends me and know I'm having it in the worthy company of my comrades........”
Gray swallowed and closed the diary. He lay back suppressing tears of forced resolution. Clutching the book in his hand, he let his meditation sidetrack to images of his wife and home in Edinburgh. As he entered into a reverie, he saw her reading his journal, weeping. He dreamt for an hour, suffering nightmare after nightmare.
At eleven thirty, when his batman Watson pulled him out of a macabre dreamt up game of pelmanism that involved parts of the human body, Gray was temporarily relieved.
That didn't last long, for as he walked towards the loud speaker, he felt that nothing had prepared him for what he was expected to do.