Sunday 18th May 1941

Pleasant surprise! Jack Chenery walked over from B Troop to see me. (B Troop has come back here from the western sector and is now about 1½ miles in front of us.) He bought me a brand new book, “Only Pain is Real,” by a brand-new author, Robert Westerby.

Had a long talk with him and later strolled back with him as far as the wadi of the stagnant pool (which is practically dry now). Jack is not a defeatist but his war theories are too realistic to be cheering. I told him I preferred to be left in my hulk-like stolidity, believing that we should win, that we should all get home someday and to find everything the same as it was! It's increasingly easy, after nearly 20 months of khaki, including 8 months of desert, to be stupid, unimaginative and brainless.

Anyhow it was grand to have someone to talk to; one can't get much intelligent conversation in the HQ area. I watched Jack scramble down the steep wadi. A plane was droning somewhere – aeronautica indiscriminato. Suddenly he turned around and grinned. “I was thinking of that day on the hill at Nablus and you, up above, watching me go down with the rifle”.