Thursday, 26th September (1918)

Lived yesterday in the hopes of a night’s sleep but it wasn’t to be.  Night trip with a special shell.  Had things gone smoothly we should have been back before midnight, but exasperating delays occurred.  I can tell you there was some hard driving on the way back.  To bed at 2 a.m.  This waning moon fascinates me.  Last night it wore an almost insane and taunting expression and seemed suggestive of universal topsy-turvy don – I know this must sound very mad.  Often one sees a stream of “tracer” (luminous) bullets flying through the air, sweeping the night and catching a plane here and there, remaining on it a moment to make sure it is one of our own, is worth watching.

The animals are now grazing in bright sunshine; they, poor brutes, get the hardest work and little enough feed and are beginning to fall off noticeably.

Cloudlets in large droves, pasturing in the heavens – to use a Shellean metaphor – all being brightened by the hope of a night’s rest.

The air grows chill; the windy incantations of the wild Scot are plaintive on the moors, and darkness covers this ancient land of France and big events methinks are impending.