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more than any other time of my life, that they are unforgettable. And I have gone over and over them ever since. Sometimes you live more life in an hour than in most weeks, and sometimes it is possible to live more in a few weeks than in all the rest of your life. This is how those days in 1944 are to me. And also I know what was said in that other language I already loved because, as I shall explain you, these events during the battle were later talked over with Jacob again and again.
    Far from being difficult to remember, my problem is that it is impossible to forget.
    When I heard them, I thought poor tortured Sam was uttering beautiful strange shell-shocked words. But Jacob knew they were a poem, which later he taught to me. As also one other, of which I shall tell you soon, that I have treasured throughout my life.
    In the silence after Sam had spoken we heard a dry voice rasp, ‘Hopkins.’ We all turned to see it was Jacob who had spoken, propped up on an elbow, looking at us with gaunt sunken eyes, and smiling a smile like the smile of a starved dog. He had returned to consciousness while we were laughing. He told me later he had heard us as if he were buried a long way down beneath the earth, and our laughter had dug him up. Everyone turned to look. ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins,’ Jacob said. Hugh, a soldier sitting near him, moved so that he could give him support, saying, ‘Look who’s come back to the land of the living.’ I went to him at once, and helped him drink some water and later to eat some biscuit. We had no bread by this time, and very littleof anything else. The soldiers had eaten all our stored food, except some bottles of preserved fruit that Mother had kept in the cellar.
    Naturally, as soon as he could speak properly Jacob wanted to know where he was and what had happened. He was confused at first and weak from lack of food and drink besides everything else he had endured. He could not believe he had been unconscious for so long and was worried because he could remember nothing about what he had been doing when the shell-burst knocked him out. The wound in his leg was hurting. He wanted to see it. We persuaded him to wait until we dressed it again. We knew how painful that would be. I gave him a painkiller. After a while, he recovered himself and was calmer. But he kept saying, ‘They should be here by now,’ meaning the main army. ‘They’ll come,’ Hugh told him, ‘they wouldn’t let us down.’ Even at that moment their big guns were shelling the German positions not far from us, making a terrible noise and shaking the earth where we sat.
    While this was happening Jacob kept giving me intent looks, struggling, I guessed, to remember who I was. At last it dawned.
    ‘The angel of mercy!’ he suddenly said but quietly, only for me to hear.
    ‘And you are Jacob Todd,’ I replied.
    He gave a little laugh that brought the melting look back in to his eyes. ‘They call me Jacko,’ he said.
    ‘I like Jacob better,’ I said.
    ‘Me too. What’s your name?’
    I told him, he tried to say it but was no better at our Dutch pronunciation than most of his comrades, so now it was my turn to have a little laugh at him. ‘Your friends call me Gertie,’ I said.
    ‘Not me,’ he said.
    ‘No?’
    ‘It’s no name for an angel. So what shall I call you? Haveyou another name? One I can say.’
    ‘Yes. But I never use it.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I don’t know. I never have.’
    ‘What is it? Come on, you have to tell me. You know you can’t refuse a wounded soldier. It isn’t allowed.’
    ‘Maria.’ (It is really Marije, but I wanted to make it easy for him.)
    ‘Maria,’ he repeated. ‘A good name for an angel. Can I call you Maria, Maria?’
    His eyes persuaded me of course. Youth is my excuse!
    I said, laughing, ‘All right. But only you. No one else.’
    The weather had become very cold and during that night regende het pijpenstelen , as we say in Dutch—which means, it was raining in