Yesterday I went down to the post office for the mail . It was a dull , bitter day . The snow was gone but the grey , lifeless ground was frozen hard and a biting wind was blowing . The whole Glen landscape was ugly and hopeless . `` Then I got the paper with its big black headlines . Germany struck on the twenty-first . She makes big claims of guns and prisoners taken . General Haig reports that ` severe fighting continues . ' I do n't like the sound of that last expression . `` We all find we can not do any work that requires concentration of thought . So we all knit furiously , because we can do that mechanically . At least the dreadful waiting is over -- the horrible wondering where and when the blow will fall . It has fallen -- but they shall not prevail against us ! `` Oh , what is happening on the western front tonight as I write this , sitting here in my room with my journal before me ? Jims is asleep in his crib and the wind is wailing around the window ; over my desk hangs Walter 's picture , looking at me with his beautiful deep eyes ; the Mona Lisa he gave me the last Christmas he was home hangs on one side of it , and on the other a framed copy of `` The Piper . '' It seems to me that I can hear Walter 's voice repeating it -- that little poem into which he put his soul , and which will therefore live for ever , carrying Walter 's name on through the future of our land . Everything about me is calm and peaceful and ` homey . ' Walter seems very near me -- if I could just sweep aside the thin wavering little veil that hangs between , I could see him -- just as he saw the Pied Piper the night before Courcelette . `` Over there in France tonight -- does the line hold ? '' CHAPTER XXVIII BLACK SUNDAY In March of the year of grace 1918 there was one week into which must have crowded more of searing human agony than any seven days had ever held before in the history of the world .
And in that week there was one day when all humanity seemed nailed to the cross ; on that day the whole planet must have been agroan XXXXX universal convulsion ; everywhere the hearts of men were failing them for fear .
At So against for in into on over to with