Having been posted in Bertrancourt for two days’ rest, Wilfred was surprisingly selected for a three week Transport Course in Abbéville - his fellow lieutenants were very jealous of his good luck!
He set off 1st February and arrived the next day. He was still freezing cold, but was made Mess President of the School Mess, started writing poetry again - sonnets with cousin Leslie Gunston and their friend Olwen Joergens - and told his sister Mary that “these days are the best I’ve ever had in the army.”
One of the sonnets he wrote at Abbéville was “Happiness”, the last three lines of which he later described as his "only lines that carry the stamp of maturity”:
The former happiness is unreturning:
Boys’ griefs are not so grievous as youth’s yearning,
Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.
