World War I Love Stories

by Gill Paul

  In that summer of 1916, Villeret became the location of dozens of makeshift field hospitals to accommodate the wounded from the Battle of the Somme, and in February 1917 the village was evacuated and the villagers were taken to a refugee camp in the Ardennes. Buildings were reduced to rubble and the wood where Robert Digby had hidden hacked down as the German army retreated, so as not to provide any succor for advancing British troops. When villagers returned in 1918, they were so horrified that many chose to move elsewhere rather than rebuild their properties from scratch. Those who had been imprisoned were released, now very thin and with their health impaired due to the harsh conditions.

  ESPIONAGE BEHIND ENEMY LINES

  Victor Marié was a smuggler and small-town crook who offered his services as a spy to the Allies in 1914. He reported back to the British about troop movements, ammunition depots, and the railway network in Occupied France, and created a network of around sixty spies that was known as ‘Réseau Victor’ (Victor Network). They used homing pigeons to pass information across enemy lines; over 100,000 homing pigeons were used during World War One, and it is estimated that they successfully delivered their messages in 95 percent of cases. In July 1916, Victor Marié was presented with a Distinguished Conduct Medal by General Haig, but at the end of that year the network he had created was uncovered by the Germans and there were mass arrests and executions—though not of Victor Marié. Suspicions grew that he had changed allegiance and betrayed his countrymen. He died in 1919 at the age of forty-three, and rumors in the village were that the cause of death was poisoning.

  Spy Victor Marié, who described Digby as “a true Englishman.”

  Pigeons had accurate homing instincts and were almost impossible to shoot down, making them ideal for carrying messages.

  After the war Claire got work in a textile factory near Villeret, and was awarded a bronze medal by the British government in gratitude for the “valuable service she had rendered” in protecting the men. She forwarded Robert’s letter to his mother, explained that she had a granddaughter, and passed on Robert’s request that she should acknowledge and help to support the child—but no word of reply ever came from the proud Ellen Digby. Perhaps she didn’t want his name to be besmirched by the revelation that he had fathered a “bastard,” and that’s why she didn’t acknowledge the girl who was known to Villeret residents as “la tiote anglaise” (the little English girl).

  Ellen Digby died in 1929, and while going through her papers her son Thomas came across the letter that Robert had sent from his condemned cell the night before he died, along with the letter from Claire. He was furious that his mother had kept such a huge secret from him, and in the summer of 1930 he made the emotional journey to Villeret to meet his brother’s daughter, who was now fourteen years of age and had bright blue eyes just like her father’s. It was said they were “as alike as two drops of water.” The family all went to the mayor’s office where Thomas signed a document recognizing Hélène as his own daughter, and on her birth certificate the name Dessenne was scored out and replaced with the surname Digby.

  It wasn’t verified during their lifetimes who had betrayed Robert, but Hélène recounted that her mother always “had it in for” Emile Marié, the mayor, and that she “wanted him dead.” In 2009, four years after Hélène’s death, an archive was discovered in the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces in Brussels containing a statement from local spy Victor Marié which said that “Robert was denounced by the mayor of Villeret.” It makes sense: in return for the lives of the fugitive Englishmen, his own son was spared.

  In 1933, Hélène married a man called Hubert Cornaille from the neighboring village of Le Verguier. Shortly after, Claire married the foreman of the textile factory where she worked, but by all accounts it was a marriage of companionship and Robert remained the love of her life. She often went to place a blue hydrangea on his grave, in memory of those startlingly blue eyes she would never forget.

  Proud Ellen Digby always refused to acknowledge the illegitimate granddaughter who was named after her, despite her son’s final wishes.

  Ivor

  GURNEY

  &

  Annie

  DRUMMOND

  Ivor wrote regularly to his friend Marion Scott while he was in Bangour War Hospital.

  Ivor’s poem, “Spring, Rouen, May 1917,” expresses his deep homesickness for England. It was published in October 1917 in the book Severn and Somme.

  Ivor Bertie Gurney

  BRITISH

  Born: August 28, 1890

  Rank & regiment: Private in the 2/5th Gloucestershire Regiment then gunner in the 184th Machine Gun Company

  Annie Nelson Drummond

  SCOTTISH

  Born: November 9, 1887

  War work: Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse

  Ivor at Christmas 1917 while in the hospital in Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, a place he called a “freezing, ugly, uncomfortable Hell of a Hole.” He was worried by the lack of letters from Annie.

  Ivor and Annie’s relationship was intense and passionate. He wrote to a friend that her “beautiful simplicity” reminded him of “the kind of fundamental sweet first thing one gets in Bach, not to be described, only treasured.”

  Ivor Gurney was the second of four surviving children of a tailor. His mother Florence was a highly strung woman who didn’t enjoy motherhood so that, according to his sister Winifred, life for the children was “something akin to a bed of stinging nettles.” Fortunately for Ivor he had a godfather, the Reverend Alfred Cheesman, who recognized his musical and literary abilities. He encouraged the boy to apply for a choral scholarship at Gloucester Cathedral, which he achieved, as well as giving him access to his library and introducing him to poetry. Ivor began composing his own music at the age of fourteen and in 1911 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. It was there he met a half-American woman, Marion Scott, who was to become one of the most significant figures in his life.

  Marion was thirteen years older than Ivor, a published poet and accomplished violinist with a wide circle of contacts in the musical and literary worlds. She had formed the Royal College of Music Union, to enable former students to stay in touch with each other, as well as the Society of Women Musicians, and she organized a program of concerts and teas for both groups. Physically fragile, she was immensely strong-willed and, having befriended Ivor, she became his champion for life. It is possible that he was briefly infatuated with her, but his feelings were soon confirmed in his mind as those of close friendship, while hers for him appear to have deepened into love.

  Ivor was a handsome, immensely charming man, but he had long been prone to manic episodes followed by periods of severe depression. At college he talked wildly of writing great operas and symphonies but was not able to produce them. His composition teacher, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, said that Ivor may have been the most gifted pupil ever to pass through the college but that he was fundamentally “unteachable.” In 1913, under the pressure of work, getting little sleep, and eating poorly, Ivor suffered a serious mental breakdown during which he considered suicide. He had to take time off college and return to his beloved Gloucestershire countryside to recuperate.

  Marion Scott wrote articles on music for a number of magazines and helped to promote female musicians. She would prove to be Ivor’s greatest champion and most loyal friend.

  By July 1914 Ivor was well enough to return to college and when war was declared he tried to enlist immediately, only to be refused because of his poor eyesight. In February 1915 he was accepted by the 2/5th Gloucestershires, and set off for basic training. He wrote to a friend, “It is indeed a better way to die; with these men, in such a cause; than the end which seemed near to me and was so desirable only just over two years ago.” The physical exertion of military training combined with a balanced diet and regular hours made him happier than he had felt for some time, and he set off for the Front determined to prove himself.

  “It is indeed a bet
ter way to die; with these men, in such a cause …”

  Into Battle

  In the trenches of France, Ivor began writing poetry, describing the horrors of war and contrasting it with the beauty of his native Gloucester. Marion Scott was his most regular correspondent, and he began sending poems for her critical appraisal. She kept him supplied with notebooks and manuscript paper for his compositions, as well as lemonade crystals, tobacco, and insect repellent. He wrote, “Your letters are as stars in the night, or blinks of sunlight—promises of blue.” Physically, Ivor was brave—“in hand to hand fighting I’d be dangerous to tackle,” he wrote to Marion—and he proved to be a crack shot. He was wounded in the upper arm in April 1917 and spent a month in hospital in Rouen before returning to the Front. On July 15, he was told he was to be transferred to the 184th Machine Gun Company, who were headed for Ypres, and just 30 minutes after this news he heard from Marion that Sidgwick & Jackson wanted to publish his collected war poems. They would come out that autumn under the title Severn and Somme.

  Between June and November 1917, Ypres was the site of the bitterly fought Battle of Passchendaele and, as soon as he arrived, Ivor was aware of the heightened danger. A German pilot was shot down and the body landed “not 30 yards” from him. He was hit twice by shrapnel that dented his helmet. Then on September 17, in St-Julien, he was caught in a German mustard-gas attack that ended his war career. Although he later wrote to Marion that “Being gassed (mildly) with the new gas is no worse than catarrh or a bad cold,” his health was seriously affected and he was shipped back to the UK. From a list of hospitals, he chose to be sent to Bangour in Edinburgh and arrived there on September 23, too ill to walk to his bed in Ward 24.

  Ivor with members of the 2/5th Gloucester Battalion, training in June/July 1915. The regimented army life suited him and he set off for the Front full of enthusiasm for the fight ahead.

  After sixteen months at the Front, Ivor enjoyed “the sheets white and smooth” as well as the plentiful supply of food from a farm on site. Before long he was able to get out of bed and play the piano, and soon an attractive, young Scottish Voluntary Aid nurse named Annie Drummond caught his attention.

  Annie had been born in Armadale, West Lothian, the eldest of five children. Her mother was a milliner and her father a coal miner, so with both parents working it became her responsibility to look after her four younger brothers. She also found time to take piano lessons and had a particular love of flowers, birds, and the outdoors. Once her brothers were old enough to fend for themselves, she began to study nursing and when war broke out she switched to the Scottish Red Cross to complete her studies, before volunteering to work at the Edinburgh War Hospital at Bangour. It was only nine miles from her home, but she lived at the hospital because the hours were so long. It was a well-run institution, founded in June 1915 in the premises of an asylum for the mentally insane. Top medical specialists came to work there and it was quickly at the forefront of orthopaedic and disease treatment in the UK, as well as having plenty of experience of treating gas attacks. Ivor was in good hands.

  Ivor in hospital in Rouen, where he spent a month recovering from a gunshot wound to the upper arm, received on Good Friday, 1917.

  At first he was too weak to do much. Even drying dishes after a meal tired him, but he began having long conversations with Annie about music, nature, and poetry. She was just a month short of her thirtieth birthday and in her prime. Ivor described her in a letter to a friend as having “a pretty figure, pretty hair, fine eyes, pretty hands and arms and walk. A charming voice, pretty ears, a resolute little mouth.” At first she appeared to have “a mask on her face more impenetrable than any other woman I have seen,” but soon this melted and she told Ivor that she had never met anyone as talented and romantic as he, and that being with him lifted her thoughts out of the daily routine. She enjoyed listening to him playing his compositions and reading his poems, and all in all thought he was quite the most interesting man she had ever met.

  Nurses were forbidden from forming romantic liaisons with patients, but many ignored the rules.

  “I forgot my body walking with her.”

  Once Ivor was well enough, they began to take walks in the surrounding countryside during her time off, and he was so smitten that he forgot about the unpleasant digestive and respiratory symptoms he was still suffering from the gas attack. “I forgot my body walking with her,” he wrote to a friend. “A thing that has not happened since.”

  All too soon, on November 17, Ivor was transferred to a hospital in Northumberland, but he wrote regularly to Annie and, although she was slower in responding than he would have liked, he dedicated his new collection of poems “to Puck,” one of his pet names for her. Throughout this time, Ivor was careful not to let Marion Scott, who was acting as his literary agent and manager, get wind of the affair. He must have known about Marion’s feelings for him and didn’t want to make her jealous and risk losing her goodwill.

  A Major Breakdown

  In early January 1918 Ivor was able to travel to Edinburgh for a weekend with Annie. They had “A glorious but bitterly cold Sunday evening. A snowy but intimate Monday evening,” and afterward he wrote to a friend that he wanted to settle down with Annie and make “a solid rock foundation for me to build on—a home and a tower of light.” He asked his sister to have his cap badge dipped in gold and turned into a brooch for Annie, and it seems that although he hadn’t given her a ring, he considered himself engaged to her and began asking her to set a date for their marriage. He wrote a poem for her—“My heart makes song on lonely roads/To comfort me while you’re away”—and said her letters to him made him feel as if she were there, “whispering most comforting things.”

  A note from the Edinburgh War Hospital requesting Ivor Gurney’s medical records. He chose to be treated so far from home partly because he didn’t want visitors.

  GAS ATTACKS

  The first gas attack of the war was launched by the French, who in August 1914 threw tear-gas grenades to hinder a German advance, but in April 1915 at Ypres, the Germans used chlorine gas delivered from pressurized cylinders, causing French troops to flee in terror. In September 1915, the British released chlorine at Loos, but the wind changed direction, making it drift back over their own lines. Phosgene gas was the next used, and this was particularly terrifying as it was hard to detect and didn’t cause symptoms for 48 hours, by which time little could be done to counteract the effects on the body. Mustard gas was used by the Germans in September 1917, and this caused suppurating yellow blisters to the sufferer that affected their eyes, skin, respiratory, digestive, and other body systems. It is thought that around 1.25 million men were injured by gas attacks during the war and, while fewer than 10 percent died of it at the time, they suffered from prolonged illnesses that incapacitated them in later life.

  Early gas masks worn by men in the trenches in 1915 offered insufficient protection. Box respirators, a two-piece design comprising a mouthpiece connected to a box filter which neutralized the harmful gases, were first issued to British troops in April 1916 in time for the Battle of the Somme.

  Ivor hoped to see Annie again in February but had to postpone the trip after losing a ten-pound note as he didn’t have any more money for the train fare. He was struck down again with stomach trouble caused by the gas attack and while recovering in hospital he received a bombshell: a letter from Annie breaking off their engagement. She never explained this action, but perhaps Ivor’s possessiveness was becoming obsessive to the point that it alarmed her. He seems to have been in a manic phase and writing odd things to friends, so maybe she caught a glimpse of his madness and was afraid of what she saw. Whatever the reason, she ended the relationship, and this was the final straw that plummeted him into a huge and very severe mental breakdown in which he heard voices and displayed psychotic behavior.

  In a letter to Marion Scott in April, Ivor told her of an encounter he claimed to have had with the spirit of Beethoven, and this worried he
r enough to seek help for him. He was moved from one hospital to another before ending up at Kings Weston near Bristol, a place that dealt with cases of shellshock. Then, on October 4, he was discharged from the army suffering from “Manic Depressive Psychosis,” which according to his discharge papers was “aggravated by but not due to service.”

  Throughout 1918, Ivor kept writing to Annie without getting a reply. He sent presents, including a new book of his poetry entitled Poems of To-Day, with the inscription, “To Nurse Drummond with thanks for joy and best wishes for all things to come.” Still there was no reply. Eventually, in desperation, he told Marion about Annie and begged her to write on his behalf. Marion was upset to hear he had been engaged, and described Annie in a letter to a friend as “the lively VAD who played fast and loose with Ivor till she drove him to desperation … who thereafter refused to have any communication with him.” In her view, Annie broke off the engagement when she found out the celebrated war poet was “insane and poor.” Another friend wrote, “As for the Drummond girl, I don’t suppose she ever arrived at an understanding of what she had done.”