For Love and Courage
Page 18
I am glad Ken liked his bottle, but you have done right well old dear, & this will give you a bit more freedom now.
Last night we had a magic lantern show which was quite amusing. One of the Padres came over with his lantern and we had Dickens’ ‘Scrooge’ which was quite nice & very good slides.
Best love to you all.
15th January 1916 – No. 38 answering 34 & 35 – Château Drouvin
Somehow tho’ I have been keeping the 14th in my mind for days, when it did come I forgot all about its significance.10 I was rather worried in the evening because my old man Macaulay was killed yesterday & being our first real casualty it put other things out of my mind. I am so awfully sorry about it; he was one of my best sergeants & was in charge of the snipers. He leaves a wife & a little girl, but I hear he had earned a pension of £1,000 a year so I hope they will not be too badly off. He was killed instantly by shrapnel.
Darling mine, I wish you were here & we could have had our day together, especially as today I have got one of my beastly colds, simply streaming!! I am going to bed now dearie & I will try and write you a decent letter tomorrow & answer these two I got tonight.
My love to you old dear.
16th January 1916 – No. 39 – Château Drouvin
I am so full of cold I simply can’t write you tonight, but I hope I shall feel better tomorrow. I lost another man today, one of my snipers,11 he was walking along a road & a shell must have fallen at his feet. He was carrying their daily report to the Brigade office when it happened. Old Steve has gone up to find out about it and hasn’t got back yet.
I see Cecil Howard has got his brevet and my S.S.M. O’Donnell a Military Cross. I am too stuffy dearie & I must go & have a good hot stew for my feet & some aspirin & see if that will do any good.
17th January 1916 – No. 40 – Château Drouvin
I am awfully angry that I forgot the 14th as I had been treasuring it up for days & how I forgot I don’t know as I intended to write you a special letter to arrive on the day.
I’ve given up being fed up dearie mine and shall just go on & not worry now. I am rather worried tho’ about ‘A’ Sqn as I hear many rumours of great unrest & almost mutiny. Their boss is most awfully unpopular, he treats the men like children & they naturally resent it.
Well done little Mairky not to fall off old Peg when she fell down. The Chugs could have some fine rides round here as there is quite a bit of park to this château. Chaytor took over the bomb school from me, then broke his leg falling off his horse & is now back as A.D.C. to ‘Sir Charles’.
No, Lillers is where the class is. We haven’t quite settled how the classes are to run but each lasts a week and whether we shall have a gap between each or run straight on I do not know yet, anyhow while the class is on I shall be away from the squadron altogether & Mac will be running it.
It is funny how we have had all these casualties just lately. Sutton in ‘A.’ Sqn got badly hit in the leg a few days ago & will be ‘hors de combat’ for a long time & my two men were killed on two consecutive days.
My dear old girl, how dare you drop my bit of comfort,12 I am so thankful that neither of you were hurt but as you say it must have frightened you a bit.
Lass dear, I am in no mood to adequately reply to your closing message, I can only endorse it. My head is too full of cold & I feel far too much like a boiled pudding to write half what I should like to. It’s not been bad, has it?
18th January 1916 – No. 41 – Château Drouvin
I want you to send me a bottle of your patent tonic so that I can pick up as fast as possible. It would be too awful to get so run down that I had to come home. I don’t think that really there is any chance, but I want to take every precaution, even to your beastly medicine.
I had a letter from old Nell & she sent us some biscuits & things which were very welcome. I sort of toddled as far as the stables today & bar that have done nothing much but sneeze & swear alternately. Thank the Chugs for their nice letters.
Best love my darling.
19th January 1916 – No. 42 answering 38 & 39 – Château Drouvin
I am much better today I am glad to say & taking quite a different view of life. Went out for a bit of a ride this morning and again after lunch. The Norton tonic rolled up today & I had my first dose after lunch but I think this is only a liver tickler & I want the other badly.
It has been a lovely day today, quite summer & it has made one feel quite different so perhaps you can read that feeling between the lines as you have read others!! A more satisfactory tone!!!
It was part of the conditions of the sailors coming to the trenches that they should go back and lecture to their ships but they said that they would never be believed & so had to have signed papers from the staff guaranteeing their statements. The object of their coming was to be able to let the Navy at large know the conditions of life of the Army as there was a feeling that the Navy was being harder treated than the Army & so this party came to see for themselves. They went into a part of the line where the communications trenches are 3 miles long & vary from one to three feet of mud & water in the bottom of them. They came in for a real big mine explosion followed by some of the heaviest shelling there has been for some time.
I am sending the Chugs some plain chocolate today. Keep the box.
My love to you old dear.
21st January 1916 – No. 44 – Château Drouvin
Alas no letter today old dear but two tomorrow. I am now completely restored to health, just a sniffle but only residue that requires a handkerchief and my ‘Church blow’.
Will you add the following names to my list of commissions & then let me know what the total is up to date.
Cpl M. G. Fielding
O. L. Jacks
L/Cpl W. W. Crowe
Cpl W. F. Martinson
J. A. FitzHerbert
W. T. MacDougall
H. H. Kilby K.E.H.
Cpl H. Whelan
L/Sgt Dawson
Cpl Morgan
W. C. Maclagan
I am very busy now coaching my two young officers so that they may make a bit of a showing at the class when we begin. I think I shall get you to address my letters to the Town Major, LILLERS while I am there as being the best means of getting them as it is a good ten miles from here.
I think of you in joyous spring
When hawthorn buds are blowing,
And in the gorgeous summer time
When roses red are glowing.
In Autumn too I think of you
But ah! in sweetest measure
My thoughts are yours when Xmas speaks
Of byegone hours of pleasure.
That’s very good for me!! I think it is high time I took up, perhaps better still, lay down the mightier weapon than the sword!!
Well, to bed my love.
WITH THIS ROBERT had enclosed a letter from the widow of Sergeant Macaulay in reply to his letter explaining the circumstances of her husband’s death on the 14th. In it she says: ‘I am thankful that he should not have to endure any more of the miseries of this hateful war if he was not to come through it.’ And, generously, at such a time of grief, she asks for her husband’s rubber boots to be given to someone else ‘as I know they are much needed’.
22nd January 1916 – No. 45 answering 42 & 41 – Château Drouvin
I spent my morning with my two youngest officers & 4 sergeants giving them a little instruction of a technical nature & more or less practising for my class & am going to take them daily for a bit & try and work them up to a little higher standard.
I must say that to sit here & read articles like you refer to & that the Government is shilly-shallying over this compulsion business is really very hard indeed. Compulsion was to have come in on Nov. 30th & even now the bill isn’t passed & they are making concessions right & left.
Sergeant Macaulay was the man from Rhodesia who Vic & Bernard both knew. He enlisted in the Regiment about Oct. 1914 & has always been in my
squadron. His wife lives at Ascot with her father-in-law, Colonel Macaulay. I wish you could go & see her, perhaps she would come & stay with you, she has a nice little girl about Bet’s age? and is quite young herself, I believe.
My snipers live in Maroc and they apparently had agreed that if they got killed they would bury one another just outside their billet & so they went up & carried him down there & buried him about 11 o’clock the same night in a little growing cemetery there, & the other man was buried there too, such a fine man he was too. The shells of both sides fly over them ceaselessly day & night.
Nothing I should like better than to build a pair of nice cottages at the gate, something like Arthur’s only lower and if we could build them for £500 I wouldn’t mind thinking it over. Ask old Fowler in a casual sort of way what a pair of decent cottages would cost? Good plain cottages with a fairly artistic outside. Country Life might produce you a good design & they have gone in a great deal for designs of good sound artistic cottages at remunerative prices. I would almost rather build two good cottages than spend £20 or £30 repairing that old one. We could get the Buckins in then if we wanted to.
My darling I fear it is going to be a very sad day for you when old Bobbo goes to school but little Ken will soon arrive at the interesting stage & he will have to be substitute for us both till this blasted war is over.
27th January 1916 – No. 50 answering 47 – Château Drouvin
I have been over to Lillers again today to make the final arrangements for the class which I am afraid are none too good as it is very hard to find room there, most of the billets being allotted.
I sent you Mrs Macaulay’s letter without comment on purpose, just to see what you would think of it. Exactly the same thing occurred to me as I couldn’t help thinking what a wonderful letter it was & what a brave woman she must be, but as you say she hadn’t by then probably quite realized her loss.
Terribly short of news again dearie mine, I am afraid, & so far as I know likely to continue so unless the stimulus of the Kaiser’s birthday stirs up the Boche to an effort.13 Give my love to the little Chugs.
29th January 1916 – No. 52 answering 49 – Château Drouvin
There has been some very heavy shelling here these last few days, the old guns fairly pooping off & the old Hun has left his trenches in one or two places but has been very well hammered & made to go back to them for his trouble. This evening I have my sergeants’ class for their bit of instruction and then dinner & letter.
I am afraid my little grey pony is going wrong in his feet. He has been rather dicky for some time now & I have been a bit anxious about him. I should be awfully sorry to have to lose him now as he is such a lovely ride but if he gets any worse I shall have to part with him. Your wretched old horse kicked Saxon on the knee just about Xmas & I am afraid he will have a permanently big knee. Your old rascal is very naughty & kicks other horses badly if he gets half a chance.
I hate the idea of leaving here, it is nearly as bad as starting out from home tho’ I expect I shall like it alright as soon as I get the class started.
Every day I hate this damned war more & I wish to goodness it was over & we were once more leading the old home life but it would be a disaster of the first magnitude if it stopped now. We must fix it but I fear it will mean at least another winter before it is over. ‘K’ said three years & it looks very like it. I cannot see how it can end for a long time unless Germany has internal trouble & with all the population soldiers & under discipline, it seems unlikely that until utter exhaustion comes, the thing can end.
1 Robert was hoping for a Mention in Dispatches for his work at the Bomb School.
2 Lieutenant D. A. Syme.
3 General Rawlinson.
4 HMS Natal was sunk in the Firth of Cromarty when munitions on the ship exploded, resulting in over 300 casualties – including a party of visiting schoolchildren.
5 His brother-in-law, Victor Hermon, who served with the Carabiniers, survived the war. He lost two of his three sons in the Second World War.
6 Captain C. A. Shaw of the Machine Gun Section, ‘A’ Squadron, K.E.H., was badly wounded at Windy Corner and died the following morning.
7 French Mountain troops had captured 1,300 Germans at Hartsmannweilerkopf in the Vosges Mountains in December.
8 This seems to refer to a proposal of marriage which was not instantly accepted.
9 A family home at Wargrave-on-Thames.
10 The date of their wedding anniversary.
11 The second sniper killed was Private Murton. Another squadron sniper, Corporal Murray, had a miraculous escape in the same location: while he was taking aim at an enemy soldier, the rifle kicked violently in his hands. The German had fired first and incredibly the bullet travelled up the bore of the rifle, stopping six inches from the muzzle.
12 Their baby son.
13 The 27th, the Kaiser’s birthday, usually heralded an attack, and this year was no exception. German troops attacked the French south of the Somme; the British counter-attacked the next day near Carnoy, the ‘Liverpool Pals’ succeeding in repulsing the enemy.
MARKING TIME FOR THE SQUADRON
FEBRUARY 1916 SAW further progress by the Russians in Armenia but also witnessed the start of the Battle of Verdun in Lorraine on the 21st. The German Chief of Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, knowing the importance of Verdun in the French psyche, had chosen the area for a major attack to divert French troops from the rest of the front. Verdun had been a key fortress since Roman times and was a symbol of resistance in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1. However, since the attack was delayed from the 12th to the 21st, the French Commander-in-Chief, Joffre, was able to act on intelligence and make defensive preparations.
Battle was waged along an 8-mile front with great ferocity, preceded by a heavy bombardment and the use of gas by both sides. Verdun proved to be the longest battle of the war, lasting ten months, until 18 December. Each side sustained enormous losses, but neither gained a strategic advantage. The Kaiser’s hope that ‘This war will end at Verdun’ was not to come to fruition. Instead Verdun became a symbol of the utter futility of the war.
On the British Front, bad weather prevented major attacks but the Germans made small gains in the Ypres Salient. Meanwhile, the Anglo-French leadership prepared for a major offensive on the Somme later in the year. Robert attended a week’s course at 4th Corps School for Divisional Mounted Troops at Lillers, taking Lieutenants D. A. Syme and H. M. Tulloch with him. Snow and ice in February made training very difficult for the squadron but in March training exercises recommenced.
Sunday 30th January 1916 – No. 53 – Lillers
I have arrived at Lillers and the class is now assembled & we meet all together for dinner at 7.30 p.m.
The class seems to be composed of a nice lot of lads tho’ I don’t expect that they know a great deal. What I am afraid of is that the weather is going to break as we had a very thick fog all day & it never lifted at all. Really you folk who live at home have absolutely no conception of the hardships that we poor soldiers have to undergo. Tonight I shouldn’t have had anything to eat at all unless I had arranged with a potty little hotel to feed us and as it was, all I could get was oysters, soup, omelette, a very nice fricassee of turkey & purée de pommes de terre followed by dessert, cheese, butter & coffee, with red & white wine & now I have dragged my weary bones back to my wretched billet, with only a large feather bed, nice fireplace & every convenience & last but not least there is no electric light which I am accustomed to!! It’s too hard!
My love to you all my darlings.
1st February 1916 – Lillers
My darling,
We had quite a nice day today & I have quite enjoyed it. On the way in tonight I called in on Russell & found Twopeny & Northcote1 there, but so far I am glad to say there is no sign of Syme going but as soon as Cameron goes, who has the guns now, I expect he will have to go & I shall get the next [subaltern] from home. I am perfectly fit & well now & feel quite up t
o doing anything that is going once more. I sent the Chugs a postcard each & as Ken has you I thought I couldn’t give him anything better so I didn’t send him one. My love to you my own darling.
2nd February 1916 – No. 56 answering No. 53 – Lillers
I enclose your son’s second letter & will send the other should it turn up. I can’t help being amused tho’ at his poor sorrowing mother sitting at home imagining her favourite son sitting in the middle of Vio’s drawing room crying his eyes out with homesickness!!!2 Ungrateful little beggars, chiddly boos, but never the less it is no doubt a blessing as it would mean that there would be a lot more sorrow in the world if it wasn’t so & there is plenty as it is, more especially these times.
As you say, dearie mine, every day does bring the war nearer to its end but I am afraid the end is a long way off yet.
My love to you my darling.
4th February 1916 – No. 58 – answering 55 – Lillers
I am really thankful that in the end I decided to come to this house & not stay at the hotel as it is the rendezvous of fellows going on leave & as the train starts about 2 a.m. they play the piano & sing until it’s time to go to the station!! I am very quiet & homely here & it suits me very well indeed.
I had another of my sniper sergeants3 hit the other day by a piece of shell on the side of the head & I am sorry to say that he has been evacuated, but I hope not to England or I shall not get him back tho’ I hear he is not very bad, only they never keep wounded folk anywhere near the front – directly they are bandaged up off they go & in many cases are in an English hospital by the following evening. Funnily enough he was a great friend of Macaulay’s & his wife’s too. He only returned from leave & seeing Mrs Macaulay last Wed. week – went up into the line on Friday & was hit Monday. He is a most charming man & I should be awfully sorry if I lost him.