I looked around my study and everything was just too damn cosy. The anodyne calm. The gentle, sputtering dance of the fire, and the books that towered all around me, their spines turned out. I couldn’t write down the echo of an exploded shell. I couldn’t smear the smell of the trench across the page. I couldn’t do this thing so that anyone could see what I meant. The things that had happened – things I laughed at when they crossed my mind – you can’t hold onto them too long, unless you want to go crazy. The dead don’t trouble me – dead is dead. It’s the ones who took impact and lived.
