14 April–9 May 1916
14th April ’16
We move tomorrow back to Corbie. A lot to be done there is there. We are to practise attacks, bayonet work, consolidation of trenches etc. and all the hundred and one little things the omission of which from the general scheme just makes all the difference in the world. This is to be the greatest battle in history and we all pray it may result in victory to our arms. It is all quite exciting, everyone being in more or less a state of expectancy. Troops keep moving in, guns seem everywhere, field guns, heavy guns, giant guns and howitzers of all weights and calibres. There should be some hair flying when they get the order to loose off. I wonder how Fritz is preparing for it all. Pretty thoroughly I expect if we know him at all. However, I think he is up against it this time. And we shall see what the next month will bring forth.
15th April ’16
It was most interesting this morning up in the new Durham trench on the top of the hill past Bronfay farm. From it the locality of our attack lies spread out like a map – a most absorbing one at the moment. For long enough we gazed at it through our glasses. There was nothing to say – nothing. You get your orders and you prepare to go. It is all wonderfully simple, like most big things. It will simply be a scrambled repetition of the hundred and one other attacks we have performed during training, scrambled because of the men who will be knocked out on the way. Either we will get there or we will be shot. Yet it causes no excitement. It is really quite wonderful and altogether different to what one expected. If we attain our objective and hold it the world will ring and English hearts will leap for joy at news of a great victory. But it is hard indeed to realise here that we stand on such a threshold. One so soon becomes accustomed to the life, to expecting danger that one accepts it as part of the daily routine, even though one never gets to like it or even to cease to regard it with interest. That, I doubt not, is too much to ask of human nature.
16th April ’16
Corbie again. And a welcome change indeed. To walk a clean street, to see shops and decent civilians, to sit in a furnished room and eat off china plates and drink from glasses is quite a joy in itself. It is pleasant, pleasant indeed.
Major Merriman and I rode over together first thing this morning. It was a lovely morning and the ride an according happiness. We came to take over the practise battle grounds from the Staffords. We came with high expectations. That was foolish of us. We should know the Army better by now. What we found was no Staffords and only a water-logged field by the canal with some odd twine tied about it and some trenches scored out of the surface. However, it will do well enough. The CO and I walked over it this evening and planned and talked for an hour. The scheme has been settled more or less and tomorrow I am to take the company and set to work.
17th April ’16
All day on marking out and planning the trench system on our sodden campagne. It has been a long job and a tiring [one] but it begins to [take] shape and by tomorrow noon should be finished and ready for use. It is very interesting and I earnestly hope will serve its purpose well.
This evening I have been working out the Sports for next Saturday with Wicks and young Harrison. They should be a success and we all look forward to them.
Earlier your sweet letter arrived and then the Easter Egg. What a truly characteristic thought of yours to send it me from Baby. It has pleased me mightily. Lord, how I long for a sight of your dear faces again.
18th April ’16
Another day on the trenches. It still rains and the men were wet through but stuck to the job well. They know, I feel sure, all about our preparations and what they are for and I think it is greatly due to the subdued excitement thus imbued that they work so well on this job.
The afternoon I gave them off, partly on account of their damp state and mainly because of the way they had worked.
19th April ’16
We hear today that the Bordersi have had rather a thin time in their sector just on the left of our line. They were heavily bombarded and the front line blown in but they held on and did, we hear, very well. Thirty-nine dead and seventy casualties in all we are told is the total damage. It is rather unsatisfactory and must have upset them considerably. I hope they will get a chance at Fritz when the time comes for us all to go for him. A pounding like that requires some wiping out and a battalion remembers it a long, long time. There must be many such scores to be wiped out.
20th April ’16
The battn concert came off tonight and was a top-hole affair. All sorts of people rolled up to give us a turn and some really first class talent was displayed. The hall was packed and the men as excited as schoolboys, yelling the choruses and whooping to the band. I hope their stay in Corbie will do them the good intended.
We cannot hear the guns here but the flashes at night can be plainly seen and tonight the sky is flickering with them. Grimwood was over to recite to us and he rang up the general for permission to stay. The general told him a repetition of last night’s bombardment was taking place, and that the unfortunate Borders were getting it again. It is rather sickening and one cannot help wondering why we don’t loose our guns in reply and thump Fritz till he quits. As an Army I’m afraid we are inclined to take things too easily. In this case, however, I trust the Borders have not suffered casualties.
21st April ’16
Two letters from you today and both telling me that my letters had not arrived. What a petty irritation it is. You say one letter you received was half blotted out and the news I told you about Verdun blotted out. What utter piffle! What empty-headed asses there must be in that safe job of censor? What possible harm could lie in the sending of good news? I ask you. What evil would it do our cause to record the fact that Fritz has taken a licking? Presumably he already knows it himself.
Some of these Base people should be tarred and feathered. I can just see a fatuous ass with weak eyes and spectacles, puffing a pipe or even a cigar as he sits in his warm office in some town by the coast and shudders that we here should even desire to say ‘Boo’ to the enemy or attempt to cheer up those at home when we have done it. I’d like to take all Base people and toe them into the trenches when it has been raining for a week or so and leave ’em there for an eight day tour to learn sense. Perhaps when they came out some of the fatuosity would have been washed off them.
22nd April ’16
The Sports today in spite of the rain were a success and especially so for B Coy. We had men in one place or other for nearly every event, pulled off the Relay (mile) and had 1st and 2nd in the ‘Best and Smartest Turn-Out’. I feel most braced about it and know the men will be jolly well bucked about it. The CO was pleased about it. He told Townsend that to have both first and second in such an event showed keenness and reflected considerable credit on me. Good old B they always rise to the occasion and I feel quite certain always will.
Gomersall, I hear, has quite a little joke. Going to Courses, Assistant Adjutants, etc., he has been practically the only duty officer in his company for over a month now. Of course OC Coys and 2nds-in-Command alternate their tours. Gomersall says, ‘I take a different Captain in with me each time to assist me with the work.’
Newdigateii of the Borders was in this evening. They came in today after a trying tour in the line. Fritz tried two ‘cut-outs’ on them. The first was successful in that he killed thirty and wounded sixty of them with shell fire. The second failed utterly, partly because of the effective measures adopted by the Borders and partly because of the artillery fire our guns brought to bear on him. Newdigate says we pounded him to blazes. And tonight our guns are strafing like the very deuce. There is a bombardment of the first order going on up there. I trust the Hun is getting a thorough pasting.
23rd April ’16
Bowly’s result is out. He was sentenced to dismissal but this was reduced by the C in C to forfeiture of seniority to the date of sentence. A let-off indeed. Yet Bowly has taken it badly. Has a grievance against the world in general. It is a p
ity. I am afraid the suspense has soured him. He is to be transferred, and leaves tomorrow. On the whole I am glad. I never could thoroughly trust him now, one never can a person who drinks. However, it is over, let it pass.
The general was over today and took us in a march past. The men looked and went past well. He was very pleased with them and said there was a great improvement.
He was very nearly put out by a shell the other day as was Grant. Grant is awfully bored about it. He says he was never so frightened in his whole life before.
24th April ’16
Don is back. I am awfully glad and thoroughly happy to see the old boy again. He is a good chap, a good soldier and a good man.
We tried the attack as a battalion this morning and the general saw it this afternoon. He also spoke to the men, told ’em they’d done well, that their record already was a good one and that the battalion was all right. We all agree with him. Also we feel we’ll do all right when the show comes off. The Manchesters have a record second to none and I pray to heaven the 22nd may be able to add to its lustre. It will be a great thing to have done.
Bowly is gone.iii I am ashamed to say that I am almost relieved that this is really a fact.
25th April ’16
A topping little company route march this morning, through Bonnay, La Houssoy and back via La Neuville. The road runs round the valley slopes with the little Ancre sparkling among the trees in the bottom.
It is pretty country, very peaceful and lazy-looking, not at all like war, not at all. It is too full of the springtime for that and it seems hateful that here the world should be so sweet a place and, only ten miles off, man, to whom it was given, should be using all his ingenuity to turn it into a hell, a terrain wherein he may slay his fellows.
This afternoon the officers played C Coy in the battn final.iv Unfortunately I played. It is the first game of soccer I have ever indulged in and I am afraid I made but a sorry showing. However, my conscience is clear because I did my best and it was no fault of mine that I was played. My body, though, is weary unto death. I ache in every joint and limb. Woe, indeed, is me!
26th April ’16
I have had an easy day indeed. A topping ride to Heilly, for the battalion’s money, along the river road which runs with the stream on one side and fields of sprouting corn on the other. The entrance to the village is in keeping. The ground rises to the left and where the skyline is cut by the château wall a great cliff of red, moss-grown, creeper-clad or crumbling bricks replaces the natural chalk and supports the château orchard, the cherry, apple and pear blossoms of which one can just catch a glimpse of above it from the road.
At the bottom of this cliff is the kitchen garden, snugly tucked in where it will catch the sun and no chill draughts can get at it. It is a riot of rhubarb, cabbage, lettuce and all other sorts of delicious things jumbled up in motley order among clumps of forcing domes. Along the cliff wall are perhaps a dozen straw hives, the drone of whose busy occupants comes soothingly to the wayfarer in the dust of the roadway, mingles pleasantly with the babble of the stream and makes him think of the loveliness of life and the sweetness of the maid he loves. I would that the war was over and that we might walk together into Heilly on this, the Bonnay road.
27th April ’16
Here we are in old Bray again.v The same old Bray, hot, bare, grubby and battered. Yet, strange to say, we find we have quite an attachment for it – it seems almost like being at home to return here. I scarcely mean that, of course, but one experiences a modification of that sort of feeling in getting back here.
The march was rather trying. The day was scorching hot and men fell out rather badly. I had six go, and feel very annoyed about it. One always finds the men with guts on these occasions. They stand out clearly from the ruck of the neurotic. It is of the latter that the majority of those who fall out are composed. They dwell on their own troubles till these swell enormously and the man who is only suffering normally believes he is in martyrdom and drops down groaning. One feels inclined to kick them where they lie.
I shall strafe my faint-hearts in the morning.
28th April ’16
The battalion has gone in to the line today and I am one of the derelicts left out. Merriman, Lloyd and Cowan accompany me but already I am sick of it. One feels like a childless wife without the battalion. It is positively hateful. John Cotton is back with us to lend a hand and the air is full of jumpiness, everyone expecting to raid or be raided. Raids seem all the go at the moment though what benefit they hold for the cost of them I, for one, do not see at all. Fritz started them, of course. He always does do damn silly things like that. And now we have butted in in retaliation. And we have gone one better by raiding not only at night but in broad daylight. The net result so far as I can see is to render Coy Commanders’ lives in the line an absolute burden to them. One will live in a continuous state of strained expectation.
Would that the big scrap would come off! But that now appears further removed than ever. What a game this is. They now talk of us going back for a rest. And only a fortnight ago we believed we would have been in Mametz before this!
29th April ’16
A day spent in soaking in the baths, strolling along the river bank – easing limbs which still remind me that I played football – and in writing both letters and the commencement of a short story.vi A thoroughly lazy day and one for which Cowan, Lloyd and myself are thankful. The Majorvii I have not talked with about it but I expect his sentiments are similar. He and Lloyd have talked books the whole evening. Both are well-read, clever men and their conversation is pleasurable to listen to. Lloyd is a cynic, a clever one so that even his bitterest sallies have the saving grace of wit. To a victim they would be the more stinging because of that. In ordinary times he writes weighty articles on social questions for the New Statesman.viii
This Army of ours is really very wonderful. Merriman is one of the best-known and cleverest barristers on the Northern Circuit. Yet here we are thrown together, I as the ignoramus of the party, in a way nothing else than this war could have brought about. In ordinary life our callings are divergent as the Poles, we would never have met, never have come to really know each other presuming we had. Yet I am sure all three of us are glad that we have done. War is not all uselessness.
The Major quoted a phrase this evening. I don’t know where he got it from but it is good. ‘This war,’ he said, ‘Is one long boredom, punctuated by moments of extreme terror.’
30th April ’16
Grimix came in to see us this morning from the Brigade. He wants to get back to the battalion. And greatly should we be glad to have him, if only for purely selfish reasons. We are eleven subalterns short at the moment, all being engaged on various outside jobs where their services could quite well be dispensed with. However I suppose the Big Men like to have a spruce entourage even though they may not be strictly entitled to one, and he but stirs a wasps’ nest who tries to interfere. It is, I suppose, a malicious crank of mine, but I do enjoy hearing of the little weaknesses, the little human touches regarding the Big Men whom one is so liable to forget are of the same clay as the rest of humanity.
The General’s, I hear, is a tendency to fussiness. He becomes excited if the corps invites itself to tea with him. He frets and fusses, gives orders again and again. ‘The watercress, is it clean? The tea, is it not too strong? And the patties, are they not rather rich, the cake rather damp? About the watercress, what was it you said? The corps are coming to tea. Didn’t I tell you? Ah, yes, of course I did. Do see to it that the tea is not too strong, nor over-stewed. The general likes it just so.’
And so on at odd intervals, which recur with greater frequency as the hour for the visit draws nearer, till by the time the illustrious ones actually arrive the Staff is reduced to a state of perspiring nervousness and feels totally incapable of entertaining the two very charming fellows who have come to see it with no other idea than that of having an enjoyable afternoon free from the constraint of
their own exalted mess.
We hear today that the Kut has fallen.x What a pity. What a sadness for Townshend. Poor man and his poor army. We feel very sorry for them. But gallant fellows all, they did their utmost, no men can do more and their capitulation can therefore hold no disgrace for them. It will be bitter news for Lake, however, and for all with him.
1st May ’16
A ride to Heilly today with Lloyd. We went with a twofold object, Lloyd being desirous of trying the much talked of restaurant there and I my new horse. For I have parted with my old Lizzie to Tom Worthington and have taken in exchange his much more flighty Marcel. Marcel was a trifle too much for Tom and I must say I found her something of a handful but she is a good mare and worth riding. When we started to come home it was dark. I only know the way across country but, the night being too black for that route, we were compelled to seek a passage by road. The inevitable happened. We became lost, mainly owing to the stupidity and utter ignorance of those portions of the army which we met and from whom we asked advice. Eventually we arrived in Bray at midnight, two jaded revellers indeed.
2nd May ’16
Two new officers arrived last night – Nanson and Cook.xi They both seem decent stuff. I have the former and ‘Ram’ the other.
I write this in the Rat Hole. I am in a day before I expected but, coming up with the new fellows, the CO seized upon me and told me to remain. There is a big lot to be done, pressure has to be put on. The general is not at all satisfied with progress and has been strafing people so now all hands and the cook are on and, for B [Company], if he is not satisfied with the night’s progress tomorrow I’ll eat my hat.
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