I sleep and live in a biggish room with whitewashd walls, tiled floor and a window looking on the road, and a stove and a mirror opposite the door. Four of us sleep here and all eat here — the other two sleep in a dug-out just over the road. We have a dirty kitchen adjoining where our cook prepares good but monotonous meals. The walls are hung with our field-glasses, helmets, water-bottles, towels, sticks, and coats when we are indoors; and round the walls stand our boots, suit-cases, washing things and some stores, also two bombs left behind by a trench mortar battery. The mirror and stove are quite genteel. Otherwise things are a bit grimy. Over the door remains a photographed group of old French people in their best clothes — the family occupies the rest of the house but is almost invisible. The men are in a barn behind. Also on the walls hang our orders and reports of operations from H.Q. We have one small round table for eating, writing and map work. At this moment — nearly 11 a m. — the crumbs from breakfast remain mixed with a spoon and fork. One other officer is writing like me, the rest are out. Now the servant has come in to clear the crumbs. I suppose my thinking about them set him moving towards them.
The water from the well is quite good for drinking. We have white wine occasionally at 1fr.50c a bottle. I am in charge of the men and mess accounts, but not having our mess kit here things are a bit hand to mouth so far.
There was a great cannonade on the Ancre, I should think, away to the south of us, the night before last, but I expect you know more about what it means than we do. We see papers irregularly and hardly look at the dates on them.
I wonder if you would mind keeping my letters, so that I might some day, if I wished, use them as a supplement to my diary? Give my love to my brothers and everyone.
Ever your loving son
Edwy
Index of Letters
To Eleanor Farjeon
Dainville
13 February 1917
My dear Eleanor,
This is my idlest morning. It is sunny and mild, but I have got the chill that everyone has had in turn and I shall not go out till I must, which will probably be this afternoon, for we have a shoot on then. My servant is a gem. He is a carpenter from Oxford named Taylor, rather slow but extraordinarily good-humoured, and thoughtful and ingenious. He washes and dams for me and pillages wood to keep our stove going and in between he keeps up a slow stream of nice rustic remarks. He won’t lose anything if he can help it. He is the most devoted thing I have met since we lost our dog. He mutters ‘They put upon good nature, don’t they, Sir’ but though I tell him not to listen to anyone but me he goes on being put upon without complaint. This is a fine hilly country with trees only on the roads and in a few woods. The villages lie along the slopes above the streams, with tiled roofs and mud in brick walls, and churches with towers and short spires something like Sussex, but often shell-bitten. There are hardly any hedges. You see nothing yet but snow and field telephone posts and barbed wire entanglements. No cattle out, no sheep. Then the straight main road lined with young trees leads past our window to the town and the cathedral. There we are to be in an orchard on the outskirts. Looking out of the window we see our dug-outs just across the road, beyond that a short slope of snow and posts and the trees lining a road on another hill a mile off. It is a somewhat dangerous position, but all the shells fall fairly well behind us, being aimed at a battery some hundreds of yards away. They had one of their guns hit yesterday, but the men were all in cover and no one was hurt. You could bury several horses in the shell holes. It is not what is called a healthy spot, but as these buildings are isolated they are hardly worth making a target of and only an accident will demolish them. It is nice to have sun without rain, but it would not matter which the weather was ifl had no chill and my boots were a good old pair that didn’t make me feel as if my feet were artificial wood. There is not much traffic on the road, but small parties do use it and despatch riders and a farm cart or two go along. I haven’t had the curiosity to go into town yet and have only seen the cathedral with fieldglasses. Partly it is the lack of perfectly comfortable boots. Partly, of course, one does not stroll here, but only moves with an object. Do you know I have not had a letter — nor has anyone — since leaving England, so that I am more egotistic than usual, as I am the only person that I really know exists, apart from these strangers round me. We are strangers who just talk insincerely and humorously when we are not talking shop. But we have come to a modus vivendi. Thorburn and I get on when it is pure talk between us two, but he is intolerable to live with, being dismal, timid and clumsy. I should like to know you were well and what you were doing. I suppose letters will begin some day. And how are your nieces, and do you ever see Maitland? I have to admit I have joined the majority against T — . He is the most unpleasant presence imaginable in our midst. He was born with the most dismal face and voice ever was, and no doubt he is not happy in this frivolous coarse crowd. But then he has never mixed with men and never learns day by day and is never helpful except with a horrible suffering sad look and manner as if this were the last day. We can perhaps forgive it but we can’t forget it. He hurts us and we hurt him — only his hurting us is no satisfaction to him as our hurting him is to us. I used to think I was dismal till now. — And perhaps I sound like it still, so I will be off. In fact I have just found it is 12 and not 11, I have to take a party along at 12.30.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Helen
Arras
27 February 1917
Dearest,
Only a word now. It is a fine sunny morning, but so was yesterday and they made full use of it. The guns here covered an infantry raid and you could not hear a word for over an hour. Then German prisoners began to arrive. Later on hostile shells began to arrive, but they were hardly so alarming as they didn’t make anything like the same din. In the afternoon I had to go out to see if a certain position was visible to the enemy. This was the first time I was really under fire. About four shells burst 150 yards away, little ones and then in the street fell a shower of machine gun bullets. I confess I felt shy, but I went on with my field glass and compass as far as possible as if nothing had happened. This makes the heart beat but no more than if I were going to pay a call on a stranger.
I try to console myself by reflecting that you cannot escape either by running or by standing still. There is no safe place and consequently why worry? And I don’t worry. What did disturb me was an English 18 pounder firing when I had only gone 3 yards past the muzzle. They do that sort of thing. The order comes to fire and they fire, damn them. But I slept very well last night. This morning is quiet again, though it is beautifully fine.
I haven’t settled to my fate here yet. I shall wait for a good opportunity of letting the Colonel know I want to get back.
They are trying to drive an English plane back with shrapnel just overhead. It looks dangerous but neither the Huns nor we hit a plane once in 10,000 rounds, I believe.
I’ve nothing to do this morning except try to settle a billeting question for 244. I shall walk up there this afternoon or evening if I can. It is several days since I heard from you. I have to borrow an envelope now, but of course I shall buy some when I think of it — don’t you get them. A writing block was really a thing I need not have sent for.
244 is still not fixed in its own position. Half are preparing it, the other half firing with another battery’s guns.
They are a nice lot of officers here, better than 244’s, only I being temporary or uncertain I don’t get on as well as if I were going (for all I know) to remain. Still no thrushes singing here, only chaffinches.
I’ve rather a rotten servant here, never has hot water, has a watch that is sometimes half an hour wrong, and never understands anything I say.
I have only once heard from Mother. Her parcel has not arrived. I wonder does she worry much. I hope not.
You have had Eleanor there by this time and lost her too. But it becomes harder for me to
think about things at home and somehow, although this life does not absorb me, I think, yet, I can’t think of anything else. I don’t hanker after anything I don’t miss anything. I am not even conscious of waiting. I am just quietly in exile, a sort of half or quarter man — at Romford I was half or three quarter man. Only sometimes I hear the things I really care for, far off as if at the end of a telephone. What I really should like is more hard physical exercise. I am rather often bored though and for fairly long periods. I am rather like a dog doing what it doesn’t want to do — as Belloc said of me years ago when I was going about with him on various errands of his before we could settle down to lunch together. The fact is it is a sort of interval in reality, a protracted railway waiting room. Yet of course not always merely that.
I won’t post this today.
I have just walked up to 244 and found no one in but letters from you and Irene both written after she had been to see you. I don’t think I will write much more. I have just seen an English plane shot down and set afire by a German; another fell near here almost at the same time and also one yesterday. The machine gun bullets came down and cut a telephone wire close by. It has turned dull and chilly and I feel damnably like early spring. The pilot of the plane managed to right it soon and came down in a spiral, though flopping — I did not go to see his fate — he was well within our lines, so was the other.
I hope Mervyn will join an OTC. It could be a good thing in many ways. The war isn’t over yet even if the Germans are evacuating some dirty ground, and Mervyn would be much more likely to get a commission if he had been to an OTC.
But I am depressed. Lots of food and too little exercise and spring. Tea will do me good and they will make some soon, if the others don’t come in.
We were sitting round the fire this evening talking about the way things are done in the Army, and I was saying we should suddenly have to signal (?) important orders to the batteries to fire instead of preparing them for probable targets — when in comes an urgent message ordering 244 and also another battery we know nothing about to open fire tomorrow. Good Lord, I hope we win the war. It will prove God is on our side.
There was a good deal of shelling at dinner and after which we kept out with talk and gramophone —
But now the rum is being opened. I have had a good talk with Berrington — he has just had a batch of New Ages:. All is well really.
All and always yours
Edwy
Index of Letters
To Eleanor Farjeon
Arras
March 1
St. David’s Day 1917
My dear Eleanor,
The ginger came. All of 244 had a good dip into it and there was still some left in the tin. It was very good and it was still more good of you to send it. Thank you. Next day Helen wrote to say you were really coming to High Beech at last. I am expecting to hear now that you did. Well, I expect to return to 244 in a day or two. They know I don’t want to stay here and a successor is being interviewed today, so that I shall soon cease to be a glorified lackey or humble adjutant to an old Indian colonel perplexed in the extreme. It has been a useful experience. I have got used to the telephone and I have seen how things are done and not done at Headquarters. Incidentally too I have been in the midst of quite a noisy artillery give and take. You can’t imagine the noise this makes in a city. I don’t pretend to like it. Sometimes I found myself fancying that if only the enemy pointed the gun like this — instead of like this — he would land a shell on the dinner table and send us to a quieter place. However he didn’t. 244 is just going into action with its own guns and I wish I were there. Soon I believe I shall be. I haven’t heard of your R.F.C. man Haslam yet. The R.F.C. was unlucky here 2 days ago. They had 4 planes brought down and officers killed. I saw 2 of them, one with the tank burning white as it flopped down. The ‘old Hun’ as the Colonel always calls him is ‘confoundedly cheeky’ with his planes in these parts. We are wondering now if the enemy is going to retire from this front. It will be strange walking about in a ghostly village which was the first I saw of the enemy’s ground, a silent still village of ruined houses and closegrown tall trees stark and dark lining a road above the trenches. It was worse than any deserted brickworks or mine. It looked in another world from ours, even from the scarred world in which I stood. In a curious way its very name now always calls up the thing I saw and the way I felt as I saw it. The name resembles a name in Malory, especially in its English pronunciation and this also gives a certain tone to the effect it had. I see it lining the brow of a gradual hill hallway up which is the English line with the German above it. The houses and trees dense and then to right and left only trees growing thinner till at last the ridge sweeping away is bare for some miles. But this is E.T.’s vein. Goodbye. Keep well and write soon.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Robert Frost
Arras
6 March 1917
My dear Robert,
I still don’t hear from you, but I had better write when I can. One never knows. I have now been living 2 weeks in a city that is only 2400 yds from the enemy, is shelled every day and night and is likely to be heavily bombarded some day. Of course the number of shells that fall is larger than the number of casualties although the place is crowded and falling masonry helps the shells, but this does not really appeal to anything but the brains that may be knocked out by them. Nor is it consoling to know that the enemy has put shells into the orchard where the battery is and all round it without injuring anybody. However it may console those who are not out here.
For these 2 weeks I have been detached from my battery to work at headquarters, which has meant getting to know something of how battle is conducted, and also going about with maps and visiting observation posts, some of which give a view of No Man’s Land like a broad river very clear and close. We went out yesterday morning to see the Gordons cross to raid the enemy but it was snowing and we only saw snow and something moving and countless shell bursts beyond. Our artillery made a roof over our heads of shells singing and shuffling along in shoals. — I return to the battery, a mile away, very soon now.
We are having many fine days, bright and warm even at times, and we begin to see larks as well as aeroplanes. I wish we did not see so many of the enemy’s. Every clear day we are continually hearing the whistle blowing the alarm. It incenses the artillery very much as the planes spot us and then tell their batteries how to hit us.
I have not a great deal to do as a rule. Long hours of waiting, nothing that has to be done and yet not free to do what I want, in fact not consciously wanting anything except, I suppose, the end. Wisdom perhaps trickles in, perhaps not. There is nobody I like much, that is the worst of it. I don’t want friends. I don’t think I should like to have friends out here. I am sure I shouldn’t. But I want companions and I hardly expect to find them. This may not be final. There are plenty of likable people. There is also one very intelligent man here, the Signalling Officer, an architect before the war, a hard clever pungent fellow who knows the New Age, Georgian Poetry (and doesn’t like it) &c. He didn’t seem to know ‘Mountain Interval’ or the author.
A letter from de la Mare came yesterday. So he has seen you. He says you don’t look as well as you ought to. Whatever he said would be little or nothing, so I needn’t complain that he said nothing. He said he wished we could have a talk. Fancy being polite to me out here. Well, there is nothing I want to forget so far. Is that right?
I have time to spare but I can’t talk. You don’t answer, and I am inhibiting introspection except when I wake up and hear the shelling and wonder whether I ought to move my bed away from the window to the inner side where there is more masonry — more to resist and more to fall on me. But it is no use thinking like this. I am half awake when I do. Besides I have hardly learnt yet to distinguish between shells going out and shells coming in — my worst alarm was really shells going out. So far it excites but doesn’t di
sturb, or at any rate doesn’t upset and unfit.
I hear my book is coming out soon. Did the duplicate verses ever reach you? You have never said so. But don’t think I mind. I should like to be a poet, just as I should like to live, but I know as much about my chances in either case, and I don’t really trouble about either. Only I want to come back more or less complete. Goodbye. My dearest love to you all.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Walter de la Mare
Group 35 Heavy Artillery
Arras
9 March 1917
My dear de la Mare,
I expect you had a letter from me soon after you wrote. At least I posted one about 3 weeks ago. Letters take a long time coming, always a week. I will write to you now in case I have less time or no time later, which is very possible. I am just moving back to my Battery after nearly 3 weeks at the Heavy Artillery Group head quarters, which has been rather an idle time but has shown me quite as much as I want to see of the way things are run. It has been idle but not exactly snug as we are only 2400 yards from the Hun and in a city which he shells daily. I think I shall prefer being shelled in a position where we are doing something direct in retaliation and not just map work. We are in a big rather pretentious modern house, with only one shell hole in it. The town hall and cathedral are all holes. It is cold, because it is big and because fuel is very scarce. I shiver all day indoors, but luckily what work I do is often out of doors and though I can’t feel that my chances of escape are very good I contrive to enjoy many things. I think I enjoy the people least of all. But that may be cleared up when the Z arrives, whenever that is to be. The Battery is in an orchard outside the town. We may see the apple blossom, but I doubt that. Nobody is very hopeful. I think myself that things may go on at this rate for more than a year. The rate may be changed, but not if the Hun can help it and his retirement looks very inconvenient in every way.
Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Page 46
