The Walking Dead

12 November 1937

We are in the second line, not the forward line. A blizzard is blowing again, again. The 'bunker' lam in, dear Enid, is an old shell-hole over which there are two wood doors that we liberated from a farmhouse. It was a big decision, last week, whether we could spare the two doors and use them as roofing, or whether we should burn them. Anything we can burn, other than the two doors, has now been used for warmth. The cold is awful. A local man told us two days ago that this was the worst winter in his memory, and he was an old man. The snow is thick over the forward line and our line, and we have not been brought food from the rear today or yesterday. The cold is so bitter and there is no more wood to heat us…In this cold we cannot fight — nor can the enemy. Their artillery guns are quiet and their aircraft cannot fly. The new enemy is the cold, the snow and the ice.

It is not only nature that is cold, but also God's heart.

Ten days ago my friend, my best friend, Ralph, was taken out of the line on a litter: dire sickness had weakened him. He could not stand. Even the commissar accepted he was no longer fit enough to stand sentry.

Today I heard from a medical orderly that Ralph had died.

It was told me so casually. Ralph had died in afield hospital. The cause of death was pleurisy. By now he will have been buried, but the orderly did not know where and could not tell me what service, if any, was held at his grave. I feel an emptiness. Ralph has abandoned me, God has deserted me.

I do not believe I will ever have another friend.

I am alone. It is not possible to leave. If I could I would. All our papers are taken from us, and without documentation, a man, a foreign volunteer, cannot pass through the checkpoints of the SIM — that is, dear Enid, the Servicio de Investigacion Militar — because I would be arrested and shot: I will die here properly, with any dignity I can find, not as a trussed chicken at a post and blindfolded…and I cannot leave, with the fight not done, my friends behind in unmarked graves. I stay close to Daniel and Ralph.

The candle I write by is near finished.

I have only the darkness, the cold and the despair.

All that is left me is my pride — and the memory of my folly. But I cling to that pride because nothing else is left for me but the Psalm's words:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept When we remembered Zion…

How can we sing the songs of the Lord

While in a foreign land?

Goodnight, dear Enid.

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