The thought that I might have passed W.O.S.B. and have gone to England, and the thought that—had my officer not postponed my L.I.A.P. by a fortnight—I would have missed this chance of a life-time (I’m being posted to Klagenfurt after L.I.A.P. and shall thus not be returning to Italy, fills me with horror; and I will try to remember this next time I’m disappointed about something, because my plans don’t work out quite according to my ideas—and I shall remember that in that case they will work out better.

It all came about like this. We were suddenly given Monday, 12th November, ofi duty for the commemoration of Armistice on the 11th, which was a Sunday, and we would therefore be free in any case—or have the half day at least. So I started talking to a girl, who had a boy-friend in Foggia, trying to find out what the possibilities of transport were. Well, the girl said there was hardly any transport on the road, that there was nowhere to stay in Foggia as there are only officers’ clubs up there, that the district was badly bombed and desolate, and that the whole scheme was most inadvisable without transport, but if one had a car one could make it in four to five hours. Well, I got terribly excited at the thought and talked to my Irish friend Bita, and we started scheming. So we put in for a sleeping-out pass to Foggia, and said transport had been arranged.

It took an hour and a half in the fishing boat driven by its small paraffin motor. Jonathan, the fisherman, sitting on the box covering the engine, said it was the most perfect day for the trip; as calm as it could ever be, and November was already a week old. Everyone that morning had said it was calm: the parish priest, the man who drove us to the harbour from the north of the island at 8.15 prompt, the man at the store who had known the weather of the Islands for nearly 70 years, for them all it was a miracle of fine weather. This is an important point; for although the boat was of the size that normally takes trippers out into the Channel at Brighton, and although Jonathan’s son dextrously steered into the waves so that we never once were splashed, the boat did toss. Jonathan on his perch moved to the rhythm of the waves, but we, his two passengers leaning against a cross-beam two yards away, were alternately looking down at him and peering up at him; and once or twice we were flung brusquely against each other. The sensation was that of a boat swing. This was to be expected. The sun was out, and had been ever since we had first arrived at Castlebay; for fifteen minutes we had peered out under its rays just over the horizon to catch the first glimpse of Jonathan’s boat coming round the point from the island of Vatersay.