Two Men - One Memorial

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Sunday, June 25.

Read Sorley's poem which Jocelyn Buxton has sent me.

The bombardment has become more noisy. This afternoon three of the German observation balloons have been blown up. I should have seen one of them go, but when a Rifleman told me about it, all I saw was a straight column of smoke. Hell is really let loose tonight. I have been out to the east end of the village, and looked over the fields at the murky horizon where the bursts of shell go flicker flacker. It is clear that their gun power is nothing to ours now. And knots of foul mouthed men stand about, maen who have sat cowering and incapable of retaliation in the early days of Ypres, and now exult over the merciless hurricane that is raging over the Bosche lines. Officers stand about in their calm way and comment on the play, and a little white terrier brushes its way among the corn, which may and may not be reaped.

Amid this pandemonium it is suprising to see and hear the ordinary circumstances of trench warfare. Occasionally a Very light goes of, scornful and inquiring, and 'that' machine gun gets in a word or two between the bursts.And I have also been out along the lane to the west side of the village, past the wild roses and the dog daisies, and looked across the spiky fringe of a battalion of corn at a quiet sunset, with violet clouds that looked like comfortable mountains, and watched a hedgehog trying to heave its way through the undergrowth.

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Monday, June 26.

The Divisional General addressed the Battalion in the morning. In the afternoon I went up to the Sucerie to reconnoitre a communication trench for carrying parties. I had a good view of the German lines round Beaumont-Hamel, and the fountains of earth and smoke and ruin which spouted there.

At 10.0 p.m. we moved to bivouac a mile to the south of Beaussart, where the ground is shaken by a 15-in. howitzer close by. I began to have a pre-Bumping-race feeling from time to time. Heavy rain poured at intervals, and the men had no cover.

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Tuesday, June 27.

Rested, while the guns roared around us.

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Wednesday, June 28.

Due to go up to the trenches to-night; but orders came round that we were to stay in bivouac, the attack being postponed a short time. Continuous rain.

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Thursday, June 29.

I scribble my entry for the day, while my servant waits to pack up this little book in my valise.

We go up this afternoon, and this book must not go too.

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LETTERS

To J.O. Whitfield.

London.

Feb. 8, 1916.

Just a line in quick haste. I'm off this afternoon, I am. For France, I think, but not quite sure. Nothing more comittal than Southampton. Your turn in Blower's was lovely (1). By Gad, it shall be done. You wait. I don't think a full face (do you?) so much as just a touzled head, just peeoing out. The Salopians would never know it was a master at the Schools, and they would continue to sen their boys as before - and they would be right.

Must stop. This is all very exciting. I wonder how I shall get on.

(1) There was a specimen of a furnished bedroom in a shop window at Shrewsbury. It was suggested that one might slip in, and be found by passers by asleep in the bed.

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To The Men - The New House.

Southampton.

Feb. 8, 1916.

It is all very incredible. Here we all sit, packs of officers, dining, drinking, and smoking; and I can't make out if it is the most miraculous, or the most inevitable, thing in the world.

Nothing to make a letter of - omly wharves, jetties, vague staff-majors at desks, stretches of water, and the stoic, sardonic, not to say laconic, British officers everywhere.

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To His Sisiter.

B.E.F.

Friday, Feb. 18.

With the use of some carbon paper I am saving time by getting off the same letter to home,Radlett, and Bala. We've been a cool twenty-four hours so far on this journey from Rouen, which we left at 5.30 yesterday evening. Not quite the old kind of night journey: the engines make a new kind of noise now. I complained about this inartistic innovation to an official, and he said it was a new kind of engine. Still, we've been very comfortable all night.

I think the strings on my violin might be a let down a little:

E string 5 tones

A string 4 tones

D string 2 tones; leaving them tight enougn to keep the bridge up.

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To His Sister.

1st R.B. - B.E.F.

Feb. 19, 1916.

I joined my Company yesterday, some miles away from the Battalion H.Q., where I wrote from last. We are billeted in a little typical French village, with hills all round, and a Maire, and a church with bells all Sunday long, and children who say:'How-do-you-do, Sir: quite well thank you.' It is very cold here, but signs of Spring on the ground; e.g. a general sort of waking up, and those loose blue flowers one finds in woods and thinks are viloets at first.

Things here are very smart. I used to think the discipline at home wasn't bad, but here - by Jove! There are four officers in this Company. We have our Mess in a dank back kitchen sort of place, which isn't any too warm. But I expected to go straight into the flooded trenches, which is a very different matter. The Company Commander is a Scotchman, a Cmabridge Rugger Captain and international, and very efficient seeming. I've got an awfully good servant, who says, 'May I offer a suggestion, Sir?'

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To C.A. Alington.

1st Batt. The Rifle Brigade - B.E.F.

Feb. 19, 1916.

Thank you ever so much for your letter, which I found with delight on arrival here last evening, after twenty-four hours journey from Rouen- not that I am really so far from Rouen as all that, but the train sat in a siding most of the night. I have been nearly a fortnight in France now. I am glad that most of the delay was at Rouen, which it was very good to revisit. I really think it is one of the cities of the world. Another Special Reservist and I arrived here in a farm cart, for all the world like two emigres making their escape - the Transport officers between them having arranged that we should get out one station too far up the line.

It was really rather funny, our arrival yesterday. I kept leaning out of the carriage window as the train crept along, very excited to hear the first gun, and wondering if I should be under shell fire in a few hours, etc. etc.; and then, two hours later, I was hiring a cab to take me to my Regiment, where on arrival I was shown my way to a real bedroom and then began a four course dinner with oysters. There's a small chance of our being out of the line for three months. That would be awful, to come out to the Front and never see a trench for three months.

I haven't heard from Southwell since I got out. I'm afraid I shall not run up against him here. I can't remember how many booksellers I've told to send me 'V.b''. If they all get here, there will be one for each officer in the Battalion.

[marina]

Three monthsout of the line - enjoy, Malcolm.

Marina

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To H.E.E. Howson.

1st R.B. - B.E.F.

Feb. 20, 1916.

These villages are all similar, each in a little hollow in the hills, each with its Marie and its church. I opened the door and went in, and 'I then saw that they were at the Vespers'.

Man, I have heard the guns going 'b'm zmph'. It was very exciting, the first hearing. Rather absurd, I expect, that seems; but it was so. It was like seeing the great men and saying, 'So that's Mr. Asquith'.

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To The Men - The New House.

Somewhere in France.

Feb. 1916.

Two Men have met, not by arrangement of their own, but by the inscrutable designs of the British Army Staff; not at a Base camp, but in the War area This is very amazing and should be reported to the other Men at once.

[ (1)In fact, the situation is something you couldn't believe. Osbick (2) for a week on end, is not at all impossible in the afternnons. The Man is in good form, but leaves something to be desired in the matter of health. He remains, however, a good man]

The Man, on the other hand, is O.C. Company, and is a BIG MAN. I have heard him giving routine orders to his Coy.S.M., and it is a very wonderful thing. The Man has secured a bottle of whisky for his Mess, so that's all right.

(1) This paragraph is inserted in E.H.L.S.'s handwriting.

(2) Riding on Horseback.

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To His Sister.

1st -R.B. - B.E.F.

Feb. 22, 1916.

Well, what do you think? I met Southwell yesterday - an incredibel piece of good luck. I am likely to see him again quite often for some time. It is so extraordinary that it is hard to realise. It seemed quite natural to be sitting round a stove fire in a kind of back kitchen. I still fancy that I shall wake up soon and find it's a dream, though the cold and wet are real enough. It's been trying to snow to-day.

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To R.A. Knox.

1st R.B. - B.E.F.

Feb. 23, 1916.

And so I said, 'I will write to him too, but in ink. It is time.'

I am reassured about you temporarily by a letter from Chambers(1), who tells me you had a birthday lately, and of your hopeless omniscience of 'Kennedy'(2) - the only original classical work. And here is The Salopian just come from that excellent man Kitch, which gives me further news of you.

Of my amazing meeting with the Man there is nothing to say except that, if Tolstoy was writinf War and Peace now, he would use the incident with great effect to show that it is not Joffre or Haig, but fate, which orders such things. He would also say this for tweo or three chapters, just as one was getting interested in some charming old people in Moscow. (Lector. 'For Heavens sake.' Me. 'Well I've just finished that work.') (3)

Of myself there is little to say that I have not said in previous letters to Men. I am living a very sinilar life to the Man's, though he says 'Our tea is better than theirs', but I say 'Look at their fire'.

(1) In V.b at the time.

(2) Kennedy's Latin Primer. White had defended in a debate Dr. Kennedy's claims to have invented the classics.

(3) See The Path To Rome, passim.

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To C.R.N. Routh.

1st R.B. - B.E.F.

Feb 26, 1916.

It is brought home to me that my last communique was from Southampton. Now Southampton is a place, a very distant place. Situated at the head of two gates to the English Channel, and having two tides a day (see the Venerable Bede on the history of the English Church), it possesses a marine traffic second only to that of London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and many others. But since then I have seen other cities, Havre, ______, _____, _______, and _______. Do you know Rouen? Very well, we will see it before we walk through Shropshire. Rouen possesses everything - wonderful churches, a fine river, good and imaginative smells (not unconnected with the river), good restaurants, - but also a Base Camp for which I was glad to leave Rouen. I once learnt French at Rouen, and it was good to revisit the people with whom I stayed.

I've been with the Battalion about a week now. We are out of the line for a month's rest, which will be over before very long. Rather lucky for me that I did not go up to the trenches straight away, as I got a chill which has developed into modified bronchitis; a distinct bore, as it is awfully difficult to get rid of in damp billets and bad weather. I'm only hoping I shall be really fit to go into the trenches. I have a horror of getting into hospital before I've seen the Huns.

The really notable fact is that I have met Southwell, which was an event.

Rather jolly hill country this, and the villages have all that French villages should have; a Maire, a town crier, large heaps of steaming straw, pigeons, and a grey church in a commanding position. The people of my billet are 'des honnetes gens', and I am writing this from the stove in their kitchen, which I prefer to our Coy. Mess, which has got a fire at last; but that fire smokes so, that one can't see across the room.

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To His Sister.

1st R.B. - B.E.F.

Sat. March 4, 1916.

I haven't written before; but, as you know, I only heard yesterday. (1) It is so hard to realise it out here. I shall not realise it indeed, I think, until and unless I return to Mere Cottage and find him gone. He has always been such a big living fact in our little lives. There never was a Father in the world before as good and as generous. His happiness consisted chiefly in the happiness of us, as it was with Mother. And now it is good to think of those two dear souls continuing a greater life in the same path. I can't help thinking of Dr. Spicer's remark to you and me: 'We think he is a wonderful man.' That was just one of his little remarks of the wonderful attractiveness of his character, which influenced people so very quickly. And now, according to G.'s and A.'s letters, we are hearing of that from the many, many hosts of people who loved him and admired his goodness.

(1)His father had died on February 27.

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To H.E.E. Howson.

1st R.B. - B.E.F.

March 4, 1916.

The chief thing about this crisis for me has been the impossibility of realising out here what has happened and a feeling of being cut off from the rest of my family by this inaccessibility and the lack of any kind of familiar surroundings. I dare say you won't understand me when I say this. I don't understand it myself. The last two days I seem to have been living in a kind of coma.

I am very glad you got to know my father that jolly week last winter at Mere Cottage, and to like him. All did, whoever cam across him. He had quite a wonderful attractiveness for people who sometimes had only known him for a few hours even.

He had a very happy life, really; full of poetry - in the sense, I mean, and taught me to love, such a lot of those things which you and I agree are good; mountains and mountain streams, clouds, west winds, good manners and gentleness to humble country people, and good books. In nearly all my 'Alpine' moments, he was not far away.

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To J.D. Chambers.

1st Batt. Rifle Brigade.

B.E.F.

Sunday, March 5, 1916.

I have been living quite a normal kind of existence with parades, and buttered eggs, and tooth-paste, and all the usual products of civilisation, including a real good British influenza cold; the sort I used to have about this time of year, when the windows were not too open, and my temper was a little higher than the normal, and my arrivals in 1st lesson a little later than the normal, and the dust off the blackboard very objectionable - quite an unpleasant experience, which I should be very glad to be going through now.

We are billeted in a village in some hilly country, which is chiefly remarkable for the public way in which they kill their pigs - at the cross-roads, if you please, for all the world to see, weekly on Thursday's at noon. This afternoon they have had a fox hunt, which means digging a trench where you suppose the fox to be, and there a crowd of men and dogs of every species, from Great Danes to Dachshunds, wait for the fox with various weapons.

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To His Sister.

1st R.B. - B.E.F.

Sunday, March 5, 1916.

It has begun quite a fine day, and I've been walking about on 'the hill at the back' and thinking of you all and thinking of Father. (It is natural to think of him among hills, isn't it?) It is sad to me to think how hopelessly I have failed to deserve pr make return for all his great love. Sad, too, to have been so cut off from you all, these days, chiefly by time.

But, dearest Mary, your letter is full of hope, and quite rightly. Remember that he almost approached old age without ever being old, and was his lively and devoted self right up to the end. It is good that a man's life should be like that, even though it ends sooner than we could have expected. Since the War, I have begun to feel more of death as being only a door into some greater lide, and familiarity with death makes one feel very close to those who have died.

I had always the regretful feeling that I did nothing for him, and he did everything for me.

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To Mrs. Whitfield.

Oxton.

March 21, 1916.

I am so very grateful for your kind letter. It was very good of you to write. Yes, I feel with you and with Jack that all our losses in the last eighteen months have given us a different view of death; and though I cannot regard it as anything less of a calamity, yet it is easier, through familiarity with it, to view it against a happier background and in a truer perspective.

My father was only ill for a short time, and death found him as we shall always be glad to remember him, lively and full of good work and active generosity.

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To His Sister.

On the train.

April 6, 1916.

People (e.g. Graham) have inquired what papers I wanted sending out. I should like the Manchester Guardian and the Literary Supplement of the Times (1d a fortnightly). And I should also be very grateful for any Press notices which may appear of 'v.b.'. I am enclosing a bit of my diary which I should have left with all the other pages.

Well, it was a fine send off you gave me, and very good of you all. I hope you were rewarded with a good breakfast as it leaves me at present.

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To His Sister.

1st R.B. Transport,

2 miles behind the trenches.

Saturday, April 8, 1916.

I have got my back up against a nice sunny bank, and the sun and violets and cowslips are grand. I've just been watching two huge guns doing this in an orchard close by:-

'Whish', audible for 10 seconds.

I'm going up to the trenches to-night. It's a lovely day; altogether, life isn't too bad.

We've had a fine Band playing Carmen and Tipperary and Yeoman of the Guard, and 'all those beautiful things' in front of the church. The guns going off 200 yards away during the music, suggested a School Sport's Day. We are not very far from the place where we were taken when the Battalion was in rest. I should like again to emphasize the scrumptiousness of the day.

[marina]

very nice comments about his father - that was touching. I am thinking of his sister - father gone, and MB soon to be.

How did the families cope with it all?

Marina

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To H.E.E. Howson.

1st R.B. - Trenches.

Sunday, April 9, 1916.

I tried to find the time to send you a line yesterday before coming up, but no. I want to tell you about three things.

(1) A walk, 12 to 1 a.m., on a dark night, when the 4th Division lorry, having brought me up from the rail-head, set me down at a village and said, 'There; now find your Battalion'. Well, my Battalion was in the trenches, as a matter of fact; but I was advised to find the 1st Line Transport. So I wlaked severalmiles over a high, windswept plateau, and while I walked I discovered the War. For the ground sloped away on the left, and the sky was being always lit up by star-shells, and the machine-guns and rifles and guns went 'tat tat tat' and 'bang' and 'boom' respectively, at two miles away. I've told you about the walk because I think you will understand. There was also, with it all, the uncertainty of my finding anyone or any bed that night; but after rousing the watch-dogs and the sentries at the village of ______, I woke the Transport officer, who put me to bed.

(2) I then want to tell you about the Spring day we had yesterday, at the Transport place two miles back; and how at the same time, within a radius of 200 yards, a Band and a 9.2 battery played together to an audience of Tommies with bow legs leading horses, fluttering pigeons and an austere grey church steeple, and me. Then in the evening, the Transport officer and I rode up to Battalion Head-quarters (dug-outs all along a road, like low shops in a medieval town), and an orderly led me out along a lane and a communication trench, under a wonderful sky of stars, to the dug-out wher I am now.

(3) Just before lunch, the Huns shelled this trench with five or six rounds, getting a direct hit with one of them and filling up a bit of trench temporarily. They sounded as if they were coming straight for my dug-out, and I was afraid where no fear was. What a wonderful way of putting it. Great Man, the Psalms.

It is very hard to believe in the seriousness of all this banging, especially on a gorgeous day like this. One is sort of mesmerised into accepting it is a kind of game.