In the evenings the div. doctors & officers from our regts. would come & sit awhile to discuss the passing events & beguile away their free time with a card game or musical programme. The Roumanian officer - of Marionpolski regt was ever a welcome guest… and soon there would be a goodly gathering round the dining table - & not many minutes would elapse before the strains of a guitar would break softly on the air - & a finely modulated voice would sing us songs of our hearts' desire. He had a good nature A. V., simple & unassuming in his demeanour - yet with that attractive nobility of character that must be recognised immediately by all who came into contact with him. Everybody liked him - perhaps- who knows? it was the music - that wonderful "something" in every born-musician's nature that beckons & fascinates that first endeared him to us - for in music is ever a brother - a "very true friend in time of need"- & in the abnormal, nomadic, wearying, ugly life that must of need be ours at such a time music was a vital necessity... it was a life-giving nourishment to the soul - that hardened & coarsened in the sordid squalor of atmosphere must of necessity languish & wither - and with such thoughts such impulses as music revived & quickened, would rise the soul - refreshed - strengthened as after sleep - & the old hankering after those things which are good - the ideals of life would return - & in them the soul would find its satisfaction! << less