“He’s come, you know, to find Marie Ivanovna.”
IV
Four?
Before I give the extracts from Trenchard’s diary that follow I would like to say that I do not believe that Trenchard had any thought whatever, as he wrote, of publication. He says quite clearly that he wrote simply for his own satisfaction and later interest. At the same time I am convinced that he would not now object to their publication. If he had been here he would, I know, have supported my intention. The diary lies before me, here on my table, written in two yellow, stiff-covered manuscript books without lines. They are written very unevenly and untidily, with very few erasures, but at times incoherently and with gaps. In one place he has cut from the newspaper Rupert Brooke’s sonnet, beginning:
“Blow out, you Bugles, over the rich Dead!”
and pasted it on to the blank page.
At times he sticks on to the other pages newspaper descriptions that have pleased him. His own descriptions of the Forest seem to me influenced by my talks with him, and I remember that it was Nikitin who spoke of the light like a glass ball and of the green-like water. For the most part he exhibits, from the beginning of the diary to the end, extreme practical common sense and he makes, I fancy, a very strong effort to record quite simply and even naively the truth as he sees it. At other times he is quite frankly incoherent. …
I will give, on another page, my impression of him when I saw him on my return to the Forest. I am, of course, in no way responsible for inconsistencies or irrelevances. He had kept a diary since his first coming to the war and I have already given some extracts from it. The earlier diary, in one place only, namely his account of his adventure during his night with Nikitin, is of the full descriptive order. That one occasion I have already quoted in its entirety. With that exception the early diary is brief and concerned only with the dryest recital of events. After the death of Marie Ivanovna, however, its character entirely changes for reasons which he himself shows. I would have expected perhaps a certain solemnity or even pomposity in the style of it; he had never a strong sense of humour. But I find it written in the very simplest fashion; words here and there are misspelt and his handwriting is large and round like a schoolboy’s.
Thursday, July 29th. I intend to write this diary with great fullness for two reasons—in the first place because I can see that it is of the greatest importance, if one is to get through this business properly, to leave no hours empty. The trying thing in this affair is having nothing to do—nothing one can possibly do. They all, officers, soldiers, from Nikolai Nikolaievitch to my Nikolai here, will tell you that. No empty hours for me if I can help it. … Secondly, I really do wish to record exactly my experiences here. I am perfectly aware that when I’m out of it all, when it’s even a day’s march behind me, I shall regard it as frankly incredible—not the thing itself but the way I felt about it. When I come out of it into the world again I shall be overwhelmed with other people’s impressions of it, people far cleverer than I. There will be brilliant descriptions of battles, of what it feels like to be under fire, of marches, victories, retreats, wounds, death—everything. I shall forget what my own little tiny piece of it was like—and I don’t want to forget. I want intensely to remember the truth always, because the truth is bound up with Marie, and Marie with the truth. Why need I be shy now about her? Why should I hesitate, under the fear of my own later timidity, of saying exactly now what I feel? God knows what I do feel! I am confused, half-numb, half-dead, I believe, with moments of fiery biting realisation. I’m neither sad, nor happy—only breathlessly expectant. The only adventure I have ever had in my life is not—no, it is not—yet ended. And I know that Marie could not have left me like that, without a word, unless she were returning or were going to send for me.
Meanwhile today a beastly thing has happened, a thing that will make life much harder for me here. All the morning there was work. Bandaged twenty—had fifty in altogether—sent thirty-four on, kept the rest. Two died during the morning. This isn’t really a good place to be, it’s so hemmed in with trees. We ought to be somewhere more open. The Forest is unhealthy, too. There’s been fighting in and out of it almost since the war began—it can’t be healthy. In this hot weather the place smells. … Then there are the Flies. I write them with a capital letter because I’ve got to keep my head about the Flies. Does anyone at home or away from this infernal strip of fighting realise what flies are? Of course one’s read of the tropical sorts, all red and stinging, or white and bloated—what you like, evil and horrid, but these here are just the ordinary household kind. Quite ordinary, but sheets, walls of them. I came into the little larder place near our sitting-room this morning. I thought they’d painted the walls black during the night. Then, at my taking the cover off some sugar, it was exactly as though the walls hovered and then fell inward breaking into black dust as they fell. They’ll cluster over a drop of wine on the table just like an evil black flower with grey petals. With one’s body they can play tricks beyond belief. They laugh at one, hovering at a distance, waiting. They watch one with their wicked little eyes … yes, I
