“For twelve days I did not wash my face, nor take off my boots, nor sleep a deep sleep. For twelve days we lay in holes, where at any moment a shell might put us out.”

Recording the exhausting and precarious conditions of prolonged front-line service · Letter to Susan Owen, 25 April 1917

• Experience
• Suffering
• War

“Thus you see how pure Christianity will not fit in with pure patriotism.”

Recognising a conflict between Christian teaching and unquestioning national loyalty · Letter to Susan Owen, May 1917

• Faith
• Principle
• War

“My senses are charred. I shall feel again as soon as I dare, but now I must not.”

Describing emotional numbness as a temporary defence against overwhelming experience · Letter to Siegfried Sassoon, 10 October 1918

• Emotion
• Suffering
• War