I am, madam, and etc.
C. Kaye Major
He was buried in the cemetary just north of Saint Vaast since we hope it will not be shelled again since we hope it will be over soon by our padre since there were just two Camels and seven E.A. and so it was on our side by that time.
C. K. Mjr.
The other papers were letters, from his great-aunt, not many and not long. I dont know why he had kept them. But he had. Maybe he just forgot them, like he had the bill fromthe London tailor he had found in his overalls in Amiens that day in the spring.
. . . let those foreign women alone. I lived through a war myself and I know how women act in war, even with Yankees. And a good-for-nothing hellion like you . . .
And this:
. . . we think it’s about time you came home. Your grandfather is getting old, and it don’t look like they will ever get done fighting over there. So you come on home. The Yankees are in it now. Let them fight if they want to. It’s their war. It’s not ours.
And that’s all. That’s it. The courage, the recklessness, call it what you will, is the flash, the instant of sublimation; then flick! the old darkness again. That’s why. It’s too strong for steady diet. And if it were a steady diet, it would not be a flash, a glare.
And so, being momentary, it can be preserved and prolonged only on paper: a picture, a few written words that any match, a minute and harmless flame that any child can engender, can obliterate in an instant. A one-inch sliver of sulphur-tipped wood is longer than memory or grief; a flame no larger than a sixpence is fiercer than courage or despair.
The End
