26 February, ’16.

. . . I do not exaggerate when I tell you that I do not sit down, not even to meals, which I snatch standing up in between washing dishes from six A.M. to about now — eight P.M. There isn’t time. When the doctor comes in the morning, I help with the dressings, such as holding an arm with a double fracture, where a bullet has torn a hole that you can see right through, while the doctor cleanses it and dresses it. At one time not so long ago, it would have made me sick in the tummy. It doesn’t now any more; my nerves are jake — I am my own man. . . .  

So Wilson is going to help strafe our friends a bit. I am sorry for the same reason you are. Bill was with you when you were writing. How I would love to see her and play with her, and to teach her to like her old dad. Home doesn’t seem so far away after your letters, but it pulls at my heart strings as I could never have believed possible — But — all may have been for the best. Oh, if only the war would end! But I am afraid that — terribly afraid — it is to be of long duration. Do you remember how every one was so optimistic at the beginning. I prophesied the coming October; I wish it was to be true: But —?