For Love and Courage
Page 15
I don’t for a moment think the war can last two more years. Germany is now using her 1917 class which means boys of 18 yrs & that is too young to stand much either in Serbia or Russia & for that even here. If our push in Serbia is strong enough we have her stone cold as we should then get Romania & Greece & her last outlet is closed.
8th November 1915 – No. 118 – Noeux-les-Mines
We are now being sent by Havre & the boat gets into S’hampton about 4 a.m. so I think the best thing is to get the family to send the car to the Docks & I ought to be home by 7 a.m. My dear old girl you would look your best at any hour now, you would be so new!! I’ve no more news old dear & am off to an early bed as I am orderly officer tomorrow!!
Best love dearie mine to you & Ben.
9th November 1915 – No. 119 – Noeux-les-Mines
If I remember right I have had letters from you bearing the same number. Don’t scoff or I shall stop writing!! I don’t want you to try & write while you are seedy & shall be very angry if I get even a line from you for 10 days so you needn’t worry a bit about me. Make the Chugs write & Addie can send me a p.c. each day.
It was most amusing about the pheasants. We had just eaten one when your letter came to say they were only half cooked. So we left the second & are going to have it tonight. They travelled very well and you would never have known they weren’t shot in the next field. The one we ate was certainly a little underdone for me! I must go now dearie as I have to go to evening stables as I am doing Orderly Officer today.
We have invested in a most lovely gramophone & it arrived at lunchtime today. It really is a topper so a few nice tunes will be acceptable if Mimi or any of them are going to London shortly.
Best love my own old darling.
9th November 1915 – No. 119a – Noeux-les-Mines
I have written you one letter already today but oddly enough & I don’t know why but I feel I want to write you another. I think it must be the effect of the newly arrived gramophone stirring up home thoughts & making one rather homesick. Just a great longing to be shut of the whole of this wretched business & once more be back with you & the Chugs.
It is raining like the very devil & I am afraid that tomorrow my horses will be up to their necks in mud once more. I moved them all onto a dry piece of ground the other day & we have all been enjoying it & now I am afraid it will all be bad again. Poor old Steve is most awfully unlucky in his nights for digging, he always strikes the wet ones & tonight is worse than it has ever been I think. I am hoping he will bring his men back early tho’ I fear it will not be in time to prevent them being drenched. I wish this damned German nation would crack up, but they certainly don’t look much like it hereabouts.
I hope all the doggies are well, but as you don’t mention any untoward happenings I conclude that such is the case. I wonder if old Spoot will have forgotten me?
Tonight would be a fine night for the waders, I think. The Government are issuing the men with the most splendid field boots you ever saw. I got 25 pairs today and the men are delighted with them. They really are splendid boots & it is astonishing how well they fit the men. Far better than puttees this kind of weather. I don’t wonder the war is costing a bit if they are giving them to everyone which of course they must.
I must go now dearie & look at my poor drowned rats.
My love to you dearie mine.
10th November 1915 – Noeux-les-Mines
I got the enclosed letter today from Chev3 which is most amusing. We marched into camp on the day before Loos in the dark and latrines are always dug as one of the first duties on getting into camp. Well we dug ours in the usual way. When morning broke we found that they had been dug right in the middle of a ‘Cavalry road’, these were marked out 30 yds wide by signboards & lead to the front clear of telephone wires so that the Cav. could go through if wanted.
About an hour after daylight a young, or rather to be correct, oldish 2/Lieut. comes along & his horse puts his feet in the holes, nearly falls, thoroughly unseats said Subaltern. The men were all standing about and I expect laughed. Then he set about cursing the squadron in general & got the men fairly wild, ending up with ‘That’s the worst of having to go on service with “dud” regiments’ & rode off. Just before dark this same officer returned & complained to me that he had lost his patrol, had had nothing to eat all day & was starving. Well he had been so awfully rude that I just asserted ‘That it was bad to be hungry’ & let him go!
I was damned if I was going to feed him (as I knew he could get food in the village if he liked to go & look for it) after he had been so rude!! I have never seen the men so upset before & I really believe if he had stayed much longer in the morning they would have had him off his horse & given him a real good hiding! That is enough explanation for Chev’s letter.
Your old horse is still doing very well & is still looking hale & hearty. He stands outside in all weathers!!
Best of love dearie mine.
11th November 1915 – No. 121 – Noeux-les-Mines
There is a little story about a pot & a kettle which if I remember right ended in some very sharp words that both sides regretted in their cooler moments. Why you should cast aspersions at my system of numbering when you dart into No. 103? Dated Nov. 8th!! However let it pass!
Now oddly enough Barber has a Beacon oilskin catalogue here – it is called ‘Weather Comfort’. The leggings are L-13 black clog. No. 325. Wellington Clog No. 165 7/11d. Have, say, two pairs of each of these three sent out to me at once will you please & I will then let you know. Size 10 in clogs.
There was a most magnificent air fight over this house this morning. An old Hun flew over & was set upon by four of our planes & the anti-aircraft guns. He got clean away & then he turned & came back right through them all & by that time a big French warplane had joined the fight & then the Hun made off getting lower & lower & I hear tonight that he failed to reach his lines & we got him. I was sorry really that he didn’t get back because he was a bold man & took on very great odds. His machine was much faster than ours tho’.
Best of love dearie mine.
ON 11 NOVEMBER, Ethel gave birth to their fifth child, a son. Robert would not hear the news until two days later.
12th November 1915 – No. 122 – Noeux-les-Mines
They have now increased my leave to 3 per week so I can come on any Friday that suits. I am sending Steve today so that clears all officers out of the way and I can then just suit myself & Ben. Tell Addie she had better make arrangements to stay on as second fiddle where she is, she’s so useful about the house!
I’ve finished our digging for the present I am glad to say. It started to rain again yesterday about 6 p.m. & it has rained something awful ever since. The wretched horses standing out in a sea of mud & water.
I’ll get old Steve to ring you up if he has time in London, but he can’t tell you much more than I can as there’s nothing to tell tho’ he can ease your mind a bit as to my position. Do you remember the name of the place where we went to after detraining? I am still at the ‘Pork butchers & boulangerie’. Well I am off to the lines now to see if I can do anything to drain a little more water away from the horses.
Best love old dear & hope to see you all very shortly now.
13th November 1915 – No. 123 – Noeux-les-Mines
I suppose the strain of writing 19014 letters in 24 hours was so much for you that you have broken down. I haven’t had a letter today & no papers from England so I am properly in the dark. By-the-bye you must hurry up now as the time is fast approaching when I shall have been away a long time!!
I have lived in my long boots ever since they came and they arrived absolutely in the nick of time. The men are looking forward to getting their leggings & clogs as winter conditions are very trying. If we can keep them with dry feet it will be a tremendous help. I am writing to Morrish5 tonight to see what can be done about allocating some of our annual income to providing useful things for the men. I believe the income is nearly £600
a year & I can’t help thinking that a lot of this might be spent on the men. My men haven’t gone to bed with dry feet for 10 days.
Best of love old dear.
13th November 1915 – No. 123a – Noeux-les-Mines
The weather conditions today have been too awful & most dispiriting. I had had a long day in a motor & got back to find no letter from you, & no newspapers & everything was rather rather. In the throes of a move too & everything thoroughly upset.
Was having dinner when Buxton brought me in a wire. I opened it wondering which it was to be & when the glorious news dawned on me everything changed at once, & incidentally the weather took up, the storm has blown itself out & the new moon is shining in an absolutely cloudless, starlit sky & the whole world seems at peace. There isn’t a gun firing & if Ben wanted a better augury he couldn’t possibly have it. Oh! Darling mine that I could be with you to join in your joy because dearie it must be worth all the weary waiting and anxiety now.
You don’t know what a difference it has made to me. It’s simply grand. Well done my old dear. Now about my coming dearie. I make out from the wire that Ben arrived on the morning of Thursday 11th & if I come next Friday that would make me arrive on Sunday morning 21st which would be a bare ten days.
I don’t want the excitement to put your temperature up or anything stupid of that sort & I feel I would be wiser to put it off until the following week when you would have had another week & I could then see you up before I had to come back again. Dearie mine isn’t it splendid, I can see you looking at him as proud as anything. Poor little Bobbo! I do so want to hear all about him & his arrival.
Dearie mine, I feel this is a rotten letter on such an occasion – it hasn’t half in it that it should, but I am just the happiest man in France tonight & it will smooth away all difficulties for a long time to come. So dearie mine, in fourteen days from tomorrow, all being well, I will be with you about 8 a.m. Don’t worry about me old dear, just lie still & get well.
ON THE 14TH ‘C’ Squadron moved from Noeux-les-Mines to Hurionville, where they were now part of the Corps Reserve. Construction of brick standings for the horse lines began on the 17th in an attempt to keep the horses clear of the deep mud.
14th November 1915 – No. 124 – Hurionville, near Lillers
I hope by now that you are beginning to feel a bit more like yourself & that Ben is behaving himself as a ‘War Baby’ should. We are now at a little village one mile S.E. of our first billet on arrival in the country. For the moment we are out of the awful mud & have got a nice clean field to put the horses in which I hope will remain fairly decent tho’ I see little or no prospect of its doing so.
I wonder what the Chugs think of Ben? I expect they have nearly torn him to bits by now in their anxiety to hold him. I expect Mairky’s remarks will have been the funniest. Well, I hope to have been with you for twelve hours by now in a fortnight’s time. Something has gone wrong at Calais & Boulogne, rumours of German mines having drifted in owing to bad weather in the N. Sea.
Anyhow little or nothing is coming through & I haven’t seen a paper for three days now. Had it not been so I should have known your good news 12 hours earlier if I was right in timing Ben’s arrival to Thursday morning. As at 6 a.m. the previous day’s paper was on sale in Noeux & I went to get the Times & Daily Mail with my early morning tea.
As it is we hear rumours of ‘unmarried conscription’ but know nothing definite. Tomorrow we only get the Observer but really I believe it is the best paper of the lot now. Had rather a strenuous day today as I am minus subaltern officers, two being on leave, one sick, and Tulloch at the Bomb School with 11 men.
I hope Ben is a credit to Pa & Ma but gather from the wire that he is alright & worthy of his membership of the family. I expect you are feeling as proud as an old Peahen! I wish I could see you just for a bit but it won’t be much longer now, tho’ I don’t expect time flies with you as it does with me.
Best of love my mother of five.
15th November 1915 – No. 125 – Hurionville
Again no mail & beyond the telegram announcing Ben’s arrival I know nothing at all.
However no news is good news & so I must possess my soul in patience once more tho’ it is beginning to get a little impatient. We had some papers today so I hope that we shall get a regular budget tomorrow.
We are expecting Von Mackensen6 back in an hour or so. He has got a room in a farm where the man is a most awful talker & there is a small baby too! We are not half so well situated here as we were at Noeux. We have got one room for a men’s room & I sleep on a stone floor on about three straw mattresses piled on one another. Quite comfortable really but nothing like so good as my last room. The only crab about the last place was ‘Jane’.7 The French as you probably know are a little casual in their sanitary arrangements.
Well Jane occupied a very central position in the house. Jane was most unpretentious. A large square hole going down into what might be the cellar. Over this the ordinary conventional seat & the whole taking the form of the earth closet, but minus the earth. I suppose it was emptied once or twice a year. Personally, on active service one in the garden was more to the liking of yours truly but inside, well! What ho! when they opened the lid. Why there was no plague, goodness only knows, but can you imagine anything more awful. It amounted to nothing more or less than an open cesspool right in the middle of the house!! I attacked it with copious draughts of carbolic which somewhat reduced things a bit but it wasn’t very quiet even then. Truly they are a wonderful race. However, we none of us took any harm and so all part of the job. ‘C’est la guerre’ as they say here to everything they don’t like.
What the devil are we going to call Ben? Personally I have rather a leaning to Kitchener, Jellico, Joffre as being seasonable but we will discuss matters when we meet. Our leave day has been put back to Saturdays now & so I have applied tonight for leave from 27th to Dec. 9th which I expect will be sanctioned alright.
There is nothing more I can tell you now old dear but if I get some letters from home tomorrow it will, I hope, start me off & you will get a head splitting epistle that will put you back months!!
My love to you my own darling, just lie still & get well as fast as you can old dear & we will have a right jolly time when I get back. What a family it is now & times so hard.
16th November 1915 – No. 126 – Hurionville
At last I have got a mail but not so big a one as I have hoped for, as I only got Addie’s letter written on the birthday morning but it is quite possible I shall get another bunch tomorrow. I got one letter from a Chug saying that the little brother was only one day old. Betsy says he has ‘lots & lots of hair for his age’ & ‘it is a very dark baby, sometimes dark babies turn fair’. ‘Isn’t it funny you left England with four of us & now when you come at the end of the month you will find five of us.’ Old Bob says: ‘We have got a little baby brother & he is so sweet a few minutes ago he was crying like anything.’ He also says ‘it is a foul day!’ I can hear the intonation of his mother’s voice in the last remark!! Isn’t Woolven’s8 a nice letter. I was so very struck with it & surprised too!
Best love to you dearie mine & I do so hope you are mending rapidly & in no pain now. ‘Ben’ must be a topper from all accounts.
17th November 1915 – No. 127 – Hurionville
I was very glad to get Addie’s letter card today. I couldn’t quite make out from her first letter whether you were really alright or not. It wasn’t a very good letter & I rather fancied that I read between the lines that you weren’t quite as well as you might have been, but her card today dispels that idea completely. Especially when she raises the possibility of your writing a short line yourself.
I had two very nice letters from the family who seem most awfully pleased about Ben. Mimi says ‘With regard to Dick and Sandhurst we have the matter in hand. Cattley says certainly not before Easter so there we shall leave it.’ I put it pretty strongly to her last time I wrote. I am writing today
and am going to ask them to send to S’hampton for me as I could then be home in the time it would take to get up to town. The boat is due at 4 a.m. Monday so with luck I should be back by breakfast time.
We have been out today doing a little squadron training which probably sounds funny in these times of war but is never-the-less true. I have just had my hair cut so as to be looking quite my best when I arrive. The boats appear to be most irregular in their crossings.
The weather is damnable, cold & snow showers & our grass field that was so nice to start with is fast becoming a bog again. I must go now & erect my chaff cutter.
Best love to you old dear, hurry slowly & take care of Ben & don’t drop him!
17th November 1915 – No. 127a – Hurionville
To my great surprise & delight quite unexpectedly I had a perfect budget of letters from you at 5 o’clock tonight. I don’t know what to say to you as you ought not to have done it, but I have loved them old dear. Really darling mine you are a dear brave old rascal because you have never let on that you were in pain all the next day, it’s very, very naughty of you not to tell the truth as I always do to you. I would love to be with you dearie, as you say.
Somehow dearie mine, I have never been able to write you a decent letter since Ben arrived. In the first place I never can write decently with other folk in the room and my own bedroom has been so awfully cold that it was impossible to raise even a warm thought except when one was in bed with one’s head under the clothes. Barber has just started the gramophone so now I don’t know what this letter will end like.
Darling mine you have been a dear brave old thing over this, not a word of all your pain, & your nice cheery card only a few hours afterwards makes one feel but a very poor thing when one thinks how one dislikes these damned shells which if they do hit one makes the job instantaneous.