 While in training for the Sanitar , Walpole devoted his leisure hours to gaining a reasonable fluency in the Russian language , and to his first full @-@ length work of non @-@ fiction , a literary biography of Joseph Conrad . In the summer of 1915 he worked on the Austrian @-@ Russian front , assisting at operations in field hospitals and <unk> the dead and wounded from the battlefield . Occasionally he found time to write brief letters home ; he told Bennett , " A battle is an amazing mixture of hell and a family picnic – not as frightening as the dentist , but absorbing , sometimes thrilling like football , sometimes dull like church , and sometimes simply physically <unk> like bad fish . <unk> dead afterwards is worst of all . " When <unk> he comforted himself with the thought , " This is not so bad as it was at Marlow " . 
