11th July (1918)

“Omnis Gallia in tres partes divisa est”*  I’m in one of them but don’t know which.

The day has been variegated, concluding at tea time with a prodigious clap of tonerre and orgasmic downpours of hail and rain.  Afternoon’s very hard work cutting chaff with a hand machine and getting the dust and grit of it into every portion of my anatomy.

Whilst I was grooming Rangatira this morning he deliberately kicked me.  I replied with interest into his cast iron ribs.  I couldn’t help being amused at the way he took his gruel; he didn’t flinch a muscle or attempt to escape.  Anyhow you can’t hurt him – he’s invulnerable – bites the noses and necks of his neighbours and scoffs at their inadequate retaliations.  I’m certain that the shells and bombs that have done for my other two mules, have hit him and bounced off, leaving merely rough, leathery, bloodless abrasions, which I cannot account for in any other way.  The poor wounded “female frenzy” shows no signs of recovering yet, rolls on her wound and prances about in a most demented manner when you go near her.  I have lately been using her in place of a spirited little chap who works with a will and whose only defect is that his head is so enormous that he is unable to carry it high and occasionally stumbles on the end of his own nose.

Moles continue to burrow around and under our bivvies and scuttle out heaps of fine earth in all sorts of unexpected places, sometimes right over some luckless slumberer’s head.

* “All of Gaul is divided into three parts”, from Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War.

[Image: Lincoln Lee, crayon sketch dated 11 July 1918 of windmill, with note “nearly 200 years old”]