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^[[12 12]]

May 6, 1973.

Dear Alice:
In writing about my quarrel with Lieutenant Murphy I am not trying to cast him as the villain in this narrative. I was more to blame than he. I had become rather ashamed of the affair, but I still didn't like Murphy and saw no reason to apologize to him. Then by pure bad luck I found myself assigned to the same battery as he.
The trouble had started back in October of 1917, soon after our arrival at Saumur. It was on the first field excursion we made. The first and second sections, mine and Murphy's, went out together. Forty bicycles were set out neatly on racks for our use. I was the only man of the forty who had never been on one before. I rode mine that day, but at first I wobbled quite badly. One of the wobbles caused me to sideswipe Murphy. [[strikethrough]] [[?]] [[/strikethrough]] No physical harm was done. He asked where the hell I thought I was going. I apologized abjectly, but it did not seem to mollify him. A little later, still struggling with that bike, I saw Murphy talking to the French lieutenant of his section. He was pointing at me and laughing. That evening after we got home Guthrie told me he had overheard Murphy make a sneering comment about me to the Frenchman.
At the time it did not occur to me to doubt what Guthrie said, though ^[[later]] I began to suspect that he had invented it. He was my friend, but he was given to practical jokes. Still, discounting Guthrie's story, I was mad at Murphy. Next day we happened to meet in a corridor with no one else around. I expressed my feelings about him in rude language.
It was a rash thing to do. Not only was Murphy a bigger man than I, he also outranked me. In the army it is regarded as bad form to swear at a superior officer. But Murphy's response was restrained. He merely said that he did not want to brawl with me, and suggested that we drop the matter. I did, but we never spoke to each other thereafter. It is sometimes hard for us to analyze our own motives. Whatever I do, I manage to persuade myself that my motives are praiseworthy. But sometimes I begin to have doubts after the event. In this instance I felt that all the names I called Murphy were simply expressions of just indignation. Looking back, I am sure that I was also using Murphy as an object on which to work off my humiliation of the day before.