Cif belief  Prayer and nonsense  The patent untruth of religious
language might have more benefits besides making it memorable  I
have been reading the letters of CS Lewis again: they seem
written from an immense distance. In important ways, they are.
He reached the trenches, as a second lieutenant in France, on
his 19th birthday; of the time when he got his blighty wound,
the regimental history records that  The casualties of the 1st
battalion between 14th and 16th April were: 2/Lieut. L.B.
Johnson died of wounds (15/4/18) and 2/Lieuts C.S. Lewis, A.G.
Rawlence, J.R. Hill and C.S. Dowding wounded: in other ranks the
estimated losses were 210 killed, wounded and missing.
Incidentally, the wounds that ended his war were caused by a
British shell dropping short, or what we would now call
"friendly fire". But when there are 215 casualties in one
unexceptional regiment within two days, no one makes a big fuss
about whose shells kill whom.  But for all the social distance
to Lewis's world, two of his characterist