I wish you had said more about Frost. One is absolutely friendless here. Everybody has something to conceal and he does so by pretending to be like everybody else. All the talk is shop or worse. It is all tedious and uncomfortable except at odd moments. But then so is life anywhere, I suppose. It is all very different from the newspapers, and very much like what one would expect. Cold, dirt, fatigue, uncertainty, and the accidental beautiful or amusing thing. If only one didn’t expect wasn’t thought to think it was something else. But then this is the case anywhere, not only out here.
I heard Lovat Fraser was married, but didn’t hear to whom, though I understood that was interesting. Hodgson I have heard nothing of. Hooton wrote me a jocular letter the other day which did not make me feel jocular. A machine gun up the street is hammering away at nails for coffins, but I never see the dead in more than a canvas bag. There is ‘some stuff coming in’ this afternoon — i e some enemy shells are falling in the street. It is snowing and dull, or there would be still more firing. What there is must be blind — without observation.
Goodbye
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Eleanor Farjeon
Ronville
13 March 1917
My dear Eleanor,
It seems hopeless to wait any longer for your parcels. I don’t understand it unless one of our officers who has one every week from Fortnum and Mason took mine by mistake. I know he had two in one week. But if so it can’t be rectified now. As a matter of fact these things all get pooled in the mess, except that I refuse to pool my apples. I am back with 244 now and much prefer it. I am out more and have a greater variety of things to do, including using my voice in the open air. We have had one or two more lovely days, mild and clear too. Yesterday a west wind blew and the rooks at their nests made things more like normal. Today actually I heard a blackbird trying, but it has turned into a cold dull day with no particular charm. The orchard is all mud now except one corner where snowdrops are flowering. It was time I left Headquarters. In the shelling yesterday shrapnel came into the office and killed the old serjeant major who had been wanting to get back to his poultry — the war had snatched him away from it. The town has been a very hot place these last few days. I only hope I shall fare no worse than I have done. I wish I enjoyed it more or rather thought about it less both during and after. Still I got some amusement out of it. For example some of the small enemy shell make a fine thin shrill whistling and I found myself mistaking the wind in the hairs of my ears for a shell approaching last night! The men as a rule are very good. They have a great advantage in being so much more matey than we are. They are always in twos or threes and we are usually alone when any difficulty appears. For example, I spent the day and night before yesterday at an O.P. with 5 men, telephonists, under me, not in the Observation Post but just handy. We were shelled and I was either alone up in the O.P. or equally alone down in the cellar with them where we eat and sleep. I didn’t much mind, but I couldn’t sleep after it. However the early morning was most beautiful, till the infantry made a raid and the artillery made a barrage for them.
Did I tell you Frost found an American publisher for my verses? Probably Helen told you. But I expect it was too late for anything to be done. De la Mare did see Frost. I heard from de la Mare, but he told me nothing really. All he said of Frost was that he looked very well and that he talked about me.
I have a cottage now. At least the Battery has. It stands at the edge of the orchard. One room is our office where I am now, with the maps. Another contains signalling stores, and the third is the sergeant major’s office and sleeping apartment. There are rose bushes in the wall and a cherry tree in front. It is old and thin and only has a ground floor with beams overhead and dirty old wallpaper and still a few photographs of inhabitants. The old woman of the house comes round now and then to look in her cupboards for something.
There are signs we shall be very ‘active’ before long. I shan’t be able to write much then, I expect. But I hope you will. It seems an age since I heard, though perhaps I still owe you a letter.
Now I must go out and get the men on to work after their dinner. There is always digging and finishing off to be done and today I have to see that it is done. It is too dull for much shooting yet. — But we have just had to shoot at a hostile battery as night came on. Now all is quiet. The enemy sent a few rounds back later, and you would have enjoyed seeing Horton’s face beam as he laughed: ‘Hark! Ack-ack!: The Bosh has got his rag out. We have got his rag out for him, right enough.’ Horton is the regular who was a ranker, the only thorough soldier among us officers. He is now a Captain and 2nd in command. He is a sort of cockney blood with quite a curl above the middle of his forrid. As soon as he talks about anything where he can’t use cant phrases and street proverbs and tags from music halls he is the most awful fool — but he is not in the least a fool.
Your letter has come by the way, when I had written half of this. It was a great joy, even to your remarks about my hour, because they reminded me of times I never think of alone but can enjoy with you for a moment. I am not pretending I am no longer E.T. but that I am not the author of Horae Solitariae although I quite admit he is a near relative.
I hope Hooper will have a long time in England and a good time.
I was interrupted to do a shoot and in the excitement your letter has disappeared mysteriously. I had only read it once.
700 sales is quite good for your verse and I am not surprised Duckworth was agreeable when you discussed the 2nd edition. We shall be bards together. But it is nice to be where nobody knows I am a bard — nice for a change to be where they don’t suspect I ever had more than 2 inches of mouse coloured hair.
They are very busy, hustling round to repair a gun and I can’t write again yet, so I will send this with good wishes for your garden. The old French woman who owns this place is also busy carting dung and if possible I will watch you two racing towards harvest. Goodbye.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To his parents
244 Siege Battery
22 March 1917
Dear Father and Mother,
As things have been happening here lately I had better let you know all is well. I have been out for 24 hours in our new front line trenches — an Artillery officer always has to be there now — observing the ground and reporting flashes of hostile guns at night. It was a very interesting and very tiring experience as I had no shelter and had not been prepared for a night at all. It taught me a good deal about cold and dirt and mud and how the infantry live and also how to tell the sound of shells that are not going to harm you, which saves you from much useless anxiety. To be relieved at breakfast time was a pleasure that overcame everything and to see the town in the sun as I came down into it was most beautiful. I slept 16 hours after a wash and a meal and now I am on duty again. The one thing I could have had and did not was my map case to protect my map from rain and mud...
We do not know enough yet about the recent movements to be elated. It means a lot of change and may only mean a new war in a new country. I am sure you are hopeful, Father, and I can only say I am willing to believe the best when I hear it.
I have been reading Beach Thomas on the ruins of Peronne, etc. I am very glad it is not my job and at the same time sure I could do it infinitely better. Julian is probably right in saying that he gets his stuff supplied to him and writes through his hat. It is a pleasure not to have to write through one’s hat.
The infantry in the trenches were very amusing company and the way they settle down and make the best of an impossible situation is just as wonderful as I have always heard. They grow all they want as fast as mustard and cress and keep smiling. Good bye and my love to all.
Ever your loving son
Edwy
Index of Letters
To his son
244 Siege Battery
23 March 1917<
br />
My dear Mervyn,
I brought back a letter from you in the mail bags today and also a new battery for my torch. Thank you very much. Do you know I have been so careful that the first one is not exhausted yet. It must have been a very good one. It is most useful in crossing this dark street when crowded with lorries or columns of horses and limbers and on all sorts of occasions.
I was so glad to hear from you and how much you were earning for Mother as well as yourself. At the same time I am more anxious for you to learn than to earn at present and I hope you will soon be moved to a new shop. You haven’t found an O.T.C. yet, have you? I wish you could, though I hope you will not have to go further than that for a long time. I don’t think war would trouble you. I see lots of infantrymen no bigger or older than you. There was one machine gunner doing duty over the parapet the other night when I was in the very very front trench. He had to stand up there behind his gun watching for an hour. Then he was relieved and made some tea for me and himself and turned into his comic little shanty and slept till the next relief. He looked ever so much older as well as dirtier when morning came. He was a very nice bright Scotch boy. Well, I expect you could do just the same. His officer was the same age and very much like him so that I think he had to look unduly severe to show the distinction.
I am glad you have got a good bicycle. Am I to buy the old one back from you when I come back? If so, you might oil it and keep it dry somewhere. It could hang up out of the way on the kitchen wall. I should like to ride over to Jesse’s with you in the summer.
I wonder could you climb that chimney? There were iron rings all the way up and I knew one was loose, but I didn’t know which. One bad feature was that you were always hanging out a bit, because the chimney tapered. It has been hit three times but only with small stuff. Now I suppose it is likely to survive as the enemy is farther off. The crossroads round it became known as Windy Comer because everybody ‘got the wind up’ as he came near it. Thousands had to go that way and yet very few were injured and only about two killed. Isn’t it wonderful how some men get hit and some don’t. But it is the same with trees and houses, so that I don’t see why it makes some people ‘believe in God’. It is a good thing to believe. I think brave people all believe something and I daresay they are not so likely to be killed as those who don’t believe and are not so brave.
You would have laughed to hear the machine gunners talking to one another and chaffing the infantrymen as they came along the trench tired and dirty.
The men all think we are fast winning the war now. I wonder if we are. I hope so. Of course I am not a bit tired of it. I want to do six months anyhow, but I don’t care how much so long as I come back again.
It is going to be Spring soon. Are you glad? Are you often happy and usually contented, and if not contented, not often in despair? Try never to let despair at anyrate make you idle or careless. But be as idle and careless as you can when you are happy and the chance comes. If you are troubled, remember that you can do what perhaps nobody else will be able to do for Mother and Bronwen and Baba: only don’t let that make you anxious either. All will come well if you keep honest and kind.
Upon my word, this sounds like a sermon and I do hate sermons, of which it is not true to say that it is more blessed to give than to receive, but it is more easy to give a sermon than to receive.
Do you have time to read now? I only read for ten minutes in bed, Shakespeare’s sonnets, with a pipe which I smoke about a quarter through and then put out the light and forget the flash of guns across the street and the rattle of the windows, everything except the thud of a shell in the marsh behind, but that seems to have stopped now. Goodnight.
Ever your loving
Daddy
Index of Letters
To Helen
Arras
24 March 1917
Dearest,
I was in that ghastly village today. The Major and I went up at 7.30 to observe; through the village was the quickest way. I never thought it would be so bad. It is nothing but dunes of piled up brick and stone with here and there a jagged piece of wall, except that the little summerhouse placed under the trees that I told Baba about is more or less perfect. The only place one could recognize was the churchyard. Scores of tombstones were quite undamaged. All the trees were splintered and snapped and dead until you got to the outskirts. The trench we observed from ran along inside a garden hedge with a cherry in it. No Man’s Land below the village was simply churned up dead filthy ground with tangled rusty barbed wire over it. The roads running through it had been very little damaged: one the actual trench cut through it. But the trees alongside were torn and broken and stripped. It was funny to come along a road and find that bit of ruin of a burnt house that I expected to have to observe from when we first came here. Then you wound round to it by deep trenches. They had begun to strengthen it for an O.P. and given it a fancy name. The well alone survives that is useful. — As the telephone was wrong we could not do a shoot from the O.P. so we came down again and went to our new position. On the way we saw a Bosh fight two of our planes. He set one on fire and chased the other off. The one on fire had a great red tail of flame, yet the pilot kept it under control for a minute or more till I suppose he was on fire and then suddenly it reeled and dropped in a string of tawdry fragments.
Our new position — fancy — was an old chalk pit in which a young copse of birch, hazel etc has established itself. Our dug out is already here, dug by the battery we are evicting. It is almost a beautiful spot still and I am sitting warm in the sun on a heap of chalk with my back to the wall of the pit which is large and shallow. Fancy, an old chalk pit with moss and even a rabbit left in spite of the paths trodden almost all over it. It is beautiful and sunny and warm though cold in the shade. The chalk is dazzling. The sallow catkins are soft dark white. All I have to do is to see that the men prepare the gun platforms in the right way, and put two men on to digging a latrine. — I am always devilish particular about that.
There are a few long large white clouds mostly low in the sky and several sausage balloons up and still some of our planes peppered all round with black Bosh smoke bursts.
I ate some oatcakes for lunch just now. They were delicious, hard and sweet.
The writing pads were quite all right, though no longer so necessary after Oscar had sent me half a dozen of these refills, which by the way are not very convenient except for short notes.
So you have found the village. We are not quite so far out as that, but between two villages and a little to this side. Both these villages are still shelled, but this particular place has never been shelled yet, so though I hear a big shell every now and then flop 200 or 300 yards away it feels entirely peaceful. But I can’t get over the fact that there is no thrush singing in it. There is only a robin. I don’t hear thrush ever. All the bright pale or ruddy stems in the copse and the moss underneath and the chalk showing through reminds me of Hampshire. The stone that the village whose name you know is built of is just like the Berryfield Cottage stone.
I heard from Sergeant Pearce yesterday. There is no mapping in the battalion at all now, so he is working in the office where they deal with plans and billetings etc for the Artists. He doesn’t seem to mind it. He says he drives over with his wife to the village we used to walk to. Robins’ sight had got worse (he injured his eye about a year ago) and he has apparently been discharged. I wonder what became of Mason. I keep forgetting or neglecting to write to Vernon. As to Benson, I forget the number of his battalion.
The wheat is very green in some of the fields a little behind us and they are ploughing near our orchard. I hope the old woman will get back to her cottage and apple trees and currant bushes and snowdrops and aconites and live happily ever after.
It is very idle of me to sit here writing, but the men are all at work and I can’t help them except by appearing at intervals and suggesting something obvious that ought to be done. They will like the new position. It is full of dug outs as
it might have been of rabbit holes, a perfect little village of dug outs, scattered about the copse alongside and in front of the guns. The copse is very little pulled about either. It is much like one of those chalk pits in Lupton’s field only much larger. I shall soon go back to tea.
Now I have had tea and oatcakes and honey and also a cake from Burzard’s Mrs Freeman sent me. I am having an agreeably idle evening, but then I am up with the lark tomorrow for 24 hours at the O.P. No letters today and tomorrow I shan’t get them if there are any. Never mind. All is well.
I am all and always yours
Edwy
The latest is that perhaps we shan’t go in to the chalk pit. The general is always changing his mind.
Index of Letters
To his mother and younger brother
Beaurains
30 March 1917
Dear Mother,
I will write you another letter to-night because I have nothing to do but be in the battery till the Major and Captain come back from dinner. One has always to be here and to-night is my turn. To-morrow I shall be too busy and probably too cold to write, and the day after I hope I shall be resting. We are still preparing. Nothing much is happening yet, though the firing seldom ceases. However, to-day has been a better day, with plenty to do and after much cold rain plenty of sunshine to do it in as the evening came on. Which somehow reminds me I ought to be writing to Julian, which I should have done had I not your parcel and your letter today to thank you for. The parcel came safe and was welcome as ever. A plain cake would be very nice whenever you can send it. The chocolate etc will be most useful on days when I am up at the O.P. and do not want to have to carry more food than is necessary. Your letter and Eleanor’s and Helen’s give me a very clear picture of their visit with Myfanwy to Rusham Road... Now I will write to Julian.
Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Page 47