18 September 1916 – 24 September 1916

The second nurse arrived to-day. Great air raid last night of which we heard nothing, thank God! My nerves are giving way under the strain.... One leg (the left) drags abominably.... We shall want a bath-chair as well as a perambulator. Crawled up thro' the path-fields to the uplands and sat in a field in the sun with my back against a haystack. I was so immobile in my dejection that Flies and Grass-hoppers came and perched about me. This made me furious. "I am not dead yet," I said, "get away," and I would suddenly drive them off.... In horrible dejection.... Even my mental powers are disintegrating--that's the rub. Some quite recent incidents I cannot remember even when reminded of them: they seem to have passed clean out of my mind--a remarkable sensation this. My sensibility is dulled too. It chagrins me to find that my present plight by no means overwhelms me with anguish as it would have done once. It only worries me. I am just a worried ox.