Dear von Runicke, 30.7.16
I cannot tell you how pleased I am you are alive. I was told your number was up for certain, and a letter was supposed to have come in from Field Ambulance saying you had gone under.
Well, it’s good work. We had a rotten time, and after succeeding in doing practically the impossible we collected that rotten crowd and put them in their places, but directly dark came they legged it. It was too sad.
We lost heavily. It is not fair putting brave men like ours alongside that crowd. I also wish to thank you for your good work and bravery, and only wish you could have been with them. I have read of bravery but I have never seen such magnificent and wonderful disregard for death as I saw that day. It was almost uncanny – it was so great. I once heard an old officer in the Royal Welch say the men would follow you to Hell; but these chaps would bring you back and put you in a dug-out in Heaven.
Good luck and a quick recovery. I shall drink your health tonight.
‘Tibs.’
I had much discomfort from the shortness of my breath; but no pain except from the finger wound, which was festering because nobody could be bothered with a slight thing like that; and from the thigh, where the sticky medical plaster, used to hold down the dressing, pulled out the hair each time it was taken off to let the wound be sterilized. I contrasted the pain and discomfort favourably with that of the operation on my nose two months previously; for which I had won no sympathy at all, because it was not a war injury. The R.A.M.C. bugling outraged me. The ‘Rob All My Comrades’, I complained petulantly, had taken everything I possessed, except for a few papers in my tunic-pocket, and a ring which was too tight on my finger to be pulled off; and now they mis-blew the Last Post – flatly and windily, and with the pauses in the wrong places – just to annoy me. I told an orderly to put the bugler under arrest and jump to it, or I’d report him to the senior medical officer.
Next to me lay a Royal Welch second-lieutenant named O. M. Roberts, who had joined the battalion only a few days before the show. He told me about High Wood; he had reached the fringe when he got wounded in the groin and fell into a shell-hole. Some time during the afternoon he recovered consciousness and saw a German staff officer working round the edge of the wood, killing off the wounded with an automatic pistol. Some of the Royal Welch were, apparently, not lying as still as wounded men should, but sniping. They owed the enemy a grudge: a section of Germans had pretended to surrender but, when within range, started throwing stick-bombs. The officer worked nearer. He saw Roberts move, came towards him, fired, and hit him in the arm. Roberts, very weak, tugged at his Webley. He had great difficulty in getting it out of the holster. The German fired again and missed. Roberts rested the Webley against the lip of the shell-hole and tried to pull the trigger, but lacked the strength. The German had come quite close now, to make certain of him. Roberts just managed to pull the trigger with the fingers of both hands when the German was only five paces off The shot took the top of his head off. Roberts fainted.
The doctors had been anxiously watching my lung, as it filled with blood and pressed my heart too far away to the left of my body; the railway journey had restarted the haemorrhage. They marked its gradual progress with an indelible pencil on my skin, and said that when it reached a certain point they would have to aspirate me. This sounded a serious operation, but it simply consisted in pushing a hollow needle into my lung from the back, and drawing the blood off with a vacuum flask. They gave me a local anaesthetic; the prick hurt no worse than a vaccination, and I was reading the Gazette de Rouen as the blood hissed into the flask. It did not look more than half a pint.
That evening, I heard a sudden burst of lovely singing in the courtyard where the ambulances pulled up. I recognized the quality of the voices. ‘The First Battalion have been in it again,’ I said to Roberts; and the nurse verified this for me. It must have been their Delville Wood show.
A day or two later I sailed back to England by hospital ship.
21
I HAD wired my parents that I should be arriving at Waterloo Station the next morning. The roadway from the hospital train to a row of waiting ambulances had been roped off; as each stretcher case was lifted from the train, a huge hysterical crowd surged up to the barrier and uttered a new roar. Flags were being waved. The Somme battle seemed to be regarded at home as the beginning of the end of the war. As I looked idly at the crowd, one figure detached itself: to my embarrassment – I recognized my father, hopping about on one leg, waving an umbrella, and cheering with the best of them.
The ambulance took me to Queen Alexandra’s Hospital at Highgate: Sir Alfred Mond’s big house, lent for the duration of the War, and reputedly the best hospital in London. Having a private room to myself came as an unexpected luxury. What I most disliked in the Army was never being alone, forced to live and sleep with men whose company, in many cases, I would have run miles to avoid.
At Highgate, the lung healed up easily, and the doctors saved my finger. I heard here for the first time of my supposed death; the joke contributed greatly to my recovery. People with whom I had been on the worst terms during my life, wrote the most enthusiastic condolences to my mother: ‘Gosh’ Parry, my horrible housemaster, for instance. I have kept a letter from The Times advertising manager, dated August 5th, 1916:
Captain Robert Graves.
Dear Sir,
We have to acknowledge receipt of your letter with reference to the announcement contradicting the report of your death from wounds. Having regard, however, to the fact that we had previously published some biographical details, we inserted your announcement in our issue of today (Saturday) under ‘Court Circular’ without charge, and we have much pleasure in enclosing herewith cutting of same.
Yours, etc.
The cutting read:
Captain Robert Graves, Royal Welch Fusiliers, officially reported died of wounds, wishes to inform his friends that he is recovering from his wounds at Queen Alexandra’s Hospital, Highgate, N.
Mrs Lloyd George has left London for Criccieth.
I never saw the biographical details supplied by my father; they might have been helpful here. Some letters written to me in France were returned to him, as my next-of-kin, surcharged: ‘Died of wounds – present location uncertain – P. Down, Post-corporal.’
The only inconvenience caused by this death was that Cox’s Bank stopped my pay, and I had difficulty in persuading it to honour my cheques. Siegfried wrote of his joy to hear I was alive again. He had been sent back to England with suspected lung trouble and felt nine parts dead from the horror of the Somme fighting. We agreed to take our leave together at Harlech when I got well enough to travel. I was able to travel in September. We met on Paddington Station. Siegfried bought a copy of The Times at the book-stall. As usual, we turned to the casualty list first; and found there the names of practically every officer in the First Battalion, listed as either killed or wounded. Edmund Dadd, killed; his brother Julian, in Siegfried’s Company, wounded – shot through the throat, as we learned later, only able to talk in a whisper, and for months utterly prostrated. It had happened at Ale Alley near Ginchy, on September 3rd. A dud show, with the battalion out-flanked by a counter-attack. News like this in England was far more upsetting than in France. Still feeling very weak, I could not help crying all the way up to Wales. Siegfried complained bitterly: ‘Well, old Stockpot got his C.B. at any rate!’
England looked strange to us returned soldiers. We could not understand the war-madness that ran wild everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language; and it was newspaper language. I found serious conversation with my parents all but impossible. Quotations from a single typical document of this time will be enough to show what we were facing:
A MOTHER’S ANSWER TO ‘A COMMON SOLDIER’
By A Little Mother
A Message to the Pacifists.
A Message to the Bereaved.
A Message to the Trenches.
; Owing to the immense demand from home and from the trenches for this letter, which appeared in The Morning Post, the Editor found it necessary to place it in the hands of London publishers to be reprinted in pamphlet form, seventy-five thousand copies of which were sold in less than a week direct from the publishers.
Extract from a letter from Her Majesty
‘The Queen was deeply touched at the “Little Mother’s” beautiful letter, and Her Majesty fully realizes what her words must mean to our soldiers in the trenches and in hospitals.’
*
To the Editor of ‘The Morning Post’
Sir, – As a mother of an only child – a son who was early and eager to do his duty – may I be permitted to reply to Tommy Atkins, whose letter appeared in your issue of the 9th inst.? Perhaps he will kindly convey to his friends in the trenches, not what the Government thinks, not what the Pacifists think, but what the mothers of the British race think of our fighting men. It is a voice which demands to be heard, seeing that we play the most important part in the history of the world, for it is we who ‘mother the men’ who have to uphold the honour and traditions not only of our Empire but of the whole civilized world.
To the man who pathetically calls himself a ‘common soldier’, may I say that we women, who demand to be heard, will tolerate no such cry as ‘Peace! Peace!’ where there is no peace. The corn that will wave over land watered by the blood of our brave lads shall testify to the future that their blood was not spilt in vain. We need no marble monuments to remind us. We only need that force of character behind all motives to see this monstrous world tragedy brought to a victorious ending. The blood of the dead and the dying, the blood of the ‘common soldier’ from his ‘slight wounds’ will not cry to us in vain. They have all done their share, and we, as women, will do ours without murmuring and without complaint. Send the Pacifists to us and we shall very soon show them, and show the world, that in our homes at least there shall be no ‘sitting at home warm and cosy in the winter, cool and “comfy” in the summer’. There is only one temperature for the women of the British race, and that is white heat. With those who disgrace their sacred trust of motherhood we have nothing in common. Our ears are not deaf to the cry that is ever ascending from the battlefield from men of flesh and blood whose indomitable courage is borne to us, so to speak, on every blast of the wind. We women pass on the human ammunition of ‘only sons’ to fill up the gaps, so that when the ‘common soldier’ looks back before going ‘over the top’ he may see the women of the British race at his heels, reliable, dependent, uncomplaining.
The reinforcements of women are, therefore, behind the ‘common soldier’. We gentle-nurtured, timid sex did not want the war. It is no pleasure to us to have our homes made desolate and the apple of our eye taken away. We would sooner our lovable, promising, rollicking boy stayed at school We would have much preferred to have gone on in a light-hearted way with our amusements and our hobbies. But the bugle call came, and we have hung up the tennis racquet, we’ve fetched our laddie from school, we’ve put his cap away, and we have glanced lovingly over his last report which said ‘Excellent’ – we’ve wrapped them all in a Union Jack and locked them up, to be taken out only after the war to be looked at A ‘common soldier’, perhaps, did not count on the women, but they have their part to play, and we have risen to our responsibility. We are proud of our men, and they in turn have to be proud of us. If the men fail. Tommy Atkins, the women won’t.
Tommy Atkins to the front,
He has gone to bear the brunt.
Shall ‘stay-at-homes’ do naught but snivel and but sigh?
No, while your eyes are filling
We are up and doing, willing
To face the music with you – or to die!
Women are created for the purpose of giving life, and men to take it. Now we are giving it in a double sense. It’s not likely we are going to fail Tommy. We shall not flinch one iota, but when the war is over he must not grudge us, when we hear the bugle call of ‘Lights out’, a brief, very brief, space of time to withdraw into our secret chambers and share, with Rachel the Silent, the lonely anguish of a bereft heart, and to look once more on the college cap, before we emerge stronger women to carry on the glorious work our men’s memories have handed down to us for now and all eternity.
Yours, etc.,
A Little Mother.
EXTRACTS AND PRESS CRITICISMS
‘The widest possible circulation is of the utmost importance.’ – The Morning Post.
‘Deservedly attracting a great deal of attention, as expressing with rare eloquence and force the feelings with which the British wives and mothers have faced and are facing the supreme sacrifice.’ – The Morning Post.
‘Excites widespread interest’ – The Gentlewoman.
‘A letter which has become celebrated.’ – The Star.
‘We would like to see it hung up in our wards.’ – Hospital Blue.
‘One of the grandest things ever written, for it combines a height of courage with a depth of tenderness which should be, and is, the stamp of all that is noblest and best in human nature.’ – A Soldier in France.
‘Florence Nightingale did great and grand things for the soldiers of her day, but no woman has done more than the “Little Mother”, whose now famous letter in The Morning Post has spread like wild-fire from trench to trench. I hope to God it will be handed down in history, for nothing like it has ever made such an impression on our fighting men. I defy any man to feel weak-hearted after reading it… My God! she makes us die happy.’ – One who has Fought and Bled.
‘Worthy of far more than a passing notice; it ought to be reprinted and sent out to every man at the front. It is a masterpiece and fills one with pride, noble, level-headed, and pathetic to a degree.’ – Severely Wounded.
‘I have lost my two dear boys, but since I was shown the “Little Mother’s” beautiful letter a resignation too perfect to describe has calmed all my aching sorrow, and I would now gladly give my sons twice over.’ – A Bereaved Mother.
‘The “Little Mother’s” letter should reach every corner of the earth – a letter of the loftiest ideal, tempered with courage and the most sublime sacrifice.’ – Percival H. Monkton.
‘The exquisite letter by a “Little Mother” is making us feel prouder every day. We women desire to fan the flame which she has so superbly kindled in our hearts.’ – A British Mother of an Only Son.
At Harlech, Siegfried and I spent the time getting our poems in order; Siegfried was at work on his Old Huntsman. We made a number of changes in each other’s verses; I proposed amendments, which he accepted, in an obituary poem ‘To His Dead Body’ – written for me when he thought me dead.
We defined the war in our poems by making contrasted definitions of peace. With Siegfried it was hunting, nature, music, and pastoral scenes; with me, chiefly children. In France, I used to spend much of my spare time playing with the French children of the villages in which we were billeted. When Siegfried had gone, I began the novel on which the earlier chapters of this book are based, but soon abandoned it.
Towards the end of September, I stayed in Kent with a recently wounded First Battalion friend. An elder brother had been killed in the Dardanelles, and their mother kept the bedroom exactly as he had left it, with the sheets aired, the linen always freshly laundered, flowers and cigarettes by the bedside. She went around with a vague, bright religious look on her face. The first night I spent there, my friend and I sat up talking about the war until past twelve o’clock. His mother had gone to bed early, after urging us not to get too tired. The talk had excited me, and though I managed to fall asleep an hour later, I was continually awakened by sudden rapping noises, which I tried to disregard but which grew louder and louder. They seemed to come from everywhere. Soon sleep left me and I lay in a cold sweat. At nearly three o’clock, I heard a diabolic yell and a succession of laughing, sobbing shrieks that sent me flying to the door. In the passage I collided with the mot
her who, to my surprise, was fully dressed. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘One of the maids had hysterics. I’m so sorry you have been disturbed.’ So I went back to bed, but could not sleep again, though the noises had stopped. In the morning I told my friend: ‘I’m leaving, this place. It’s worse than France.’ There were thousands of mothers like her, getting in touch with their dead sons by various spiritualistic means.
In November, Siegfried and I rejoined the battalion at Litherland, and shared a hut. We decided not to make any public protest against war. Siegfried said that we must ‘keep up the good reputation of the poets’ – as men of courage, he meant. Our best place would be back in France, away from the more shameless madness of home-service. There, our function would not be to kill Germans, though that might happen, but to make things easier for the men under our command. For them, the difference between being commanded by someone whom they could count as a friend – someone who protected them as much as he could from the grosser indignities of the military system – and having to study the whims of any petty tyrant in an officer’s tunic, made all the difference in the world. By this time, the ranks of both line battalions were filled with men who had enlisted for patriotic reasons and resented the professional-soldier tradition… Siegfried had already shown what he meant. The Fricourt attack was rehearsed over dummy trenches in the back areas until the whole performance, having reached perfection, began to grow stale. Siegfried, ordered to rehearse once more on the day before the attack, led his platoon into a wood and instead read to them – nothing military or literary, just the London Mail. Though the London Mail, a daring new popular weekly, was hardly in his line, Siegfried thought that the men would enjoy the ‘Things We Want To Know’ column.
Goodbye to All That Page 24