LAST WORDS OF A "SOLDIER AND DRAMATIST"
Letters of Harold Chapin
An American Who Died for England at Loos, on September 26, 1915
The story of Harold Chapin's life and death is a glorious page in the annals of the Great War. This brilliant, young dramatist was born in Brooklyn in 1888. His mother is an actress and when the boy was seven years old, he made his first appearance on the stage in the Memorial Theater, Stratford-on-Avon, England, where his mother was engaged to play during a Shakespeare festival. From this youthful beginning, he developed into an actor, producer, and dramatist of great ability, gaining a reputation on both continents. When war was declared on August 4th, 1914, Harold Chapin found that "he could not act, he could not write" he could think only of the war and the world bowed in tragedy. Finally, on September 2, 1914, he enlisted in the R. A. M. C. The artist and dreamer became an enthusiastic soldier. While fighting at the battle of Loos, he was killed on Sunday, September 26, 1915. He was only 29 years of age but "he had lived worthily and he died gloriously." The letters which Harold Chapin wrote to his mother, his wife, and his little son have been published in this country in book form by the John Lane Company, under the title "Soldier and Dramatist." They form a notable contribution to the war's literature. Several of the letters are here reprinted by permission of the publishers from the hundred or more in the published collection: Copyright 1916.
[9] I—STORY OF HOW HAROLD CHAPIN DIED
The following letter from Mr. Richard Capell one of Harold Chapin's comrades, was the first intimation Mrs. Chapin received of her husband's death. It was, of course, written hurriedly and under trying conditions, but it gives so touching and dramatic an account of Harold Chapin's last days, that it is felt that it must be included in this book exactly as it was received.
October 3rd, 1915.
My Dear Mrs. Chapin,
I beg you to accept my heartfelt condolences. I would not so much as hint at the word consolation to you after this unutterably cruel blow,—even to us, his chance friends of less than a year, it seems too cruel to be realisable,—were it not that I can give you some account, at first hand, of the splendid work of your husband on those days, September 25th and 26th. It must surely be, eventually, a consolation to you to think that he died no mean, casual death, but that he was shot down (on the afternoon of Sunday a week ago) when actually on an errand of help, and after giving himself up for hour after hour to heavy and perilous toil for the wounded. I have been at some pains to get for you some details of that fatal afternoon, but I cannot—the reason will be obvious—now tell you quite all there is. The essential is that on Sunday morning an appeal came to our station for stretcher-bearers to assist a battalion, seven of whose bearers were out of action. Your husband and two other men set out for the trenches in question, which were to the south-west of Loos. The journey, itself, had its perils. Over the distance of two miles or thereabouts, the Germans, who were rallying after their defeat of the day before, could enfilade our ground. One day I will explain the position with precision. The three of them eventually reached the series of trenches at a moment when the Germans were counter-attacking, and were told by an officer that stretcher-work was impossible at such a moment. It was suicide to show one's head above the parapet. This was, of course, one of the old German trenches, and the enemy fire came both from front and right flank. Chapin consequently told the two others to wait for him while he reported to the medical officer who had appealed in the morning, his intention being to return to collect the wounded after dark, as we did during the week as a matter of routine. The two never saw him again.
Our line that afternoon wavered for a moment, before the counter-attack. There was a short period of confusion, and some of our men were caught in the open by German rifle and machine-gun fire. You may possibly one day get an exact account from an actual eye-witness, but from what I can piece together, your husband went over the parapet to fetch in some wounded man. He was certainly shot in the foot. It appears that he persisted and was then killed outright by a shot through the head.
Our work was so exacting at that moment, that hours passed before Chapin's absence was noticed at our station, and it was not till the following morning that we felt anxious.
I pass over a series of extravagant adventures that befell me as I made my way, then, to your husband's destination of the day before, with the idea of getting first-hand information. I found myself on the scene when the English were making a further attack. It was impossible, in daylight, to go into the open, but I found from a medical officer that a lance-corporal of the R.A.M.C. had, the night before, been seen dead over the parapet. The English attack, that afternoon, improved the position. The next morning, we had a run out there; your husband had been buried in the night near where he fell. I went down on Wednesday to the trenches, saw the officer who had been in charge of the burial party, and eventually got the papers, watch, etc., which were found on his body. These you will have received by now, I suppose. There can be no harm in telling you that he lies with six other London Territorials, within a few hundred yards of Loos cemetery.
If I have the pleasure of seeing you again, when this ghastly business is over, I will tell you something of Chapin's fine work on the Saturday, collecting wounded on the wire before the first captured German trench. For many hours I was out there with him;—heart-breaking conditions, twenty appeals for help where one could only heed one; rain for hour after hour, and no little annoyance from cross-fire. On one journey, three of us (your husband was one) came in for a tempest of fire. Two of us lay low with the laden stretcher on the grass, while your husband volunteered to go ahead into the village, using a communication trench to bring back the "wheels," by which we get stretchers along at a good pace over roads. Eventually the tempest ended, and the whole day ended without casualties for us. We went to bed at midnight for two hours. Before daybreak I joined a party that was going to Loos, and so began the fatal Sunday.
If, dear Mrs. Chapin, you succeed in getting more detailed information of your husband's death it will be from some one or another in the 17th Battalion London Regiment.
I feel that I am intruding on your grief. Excuse me, and believe me, with profound sympathy,
Yours very sincerely,
Richard Capell.
II—LETTER TO HIS SON ON HIS BIRTHDAY
St. Albans, Dec. 21st, 1914.
My Darling,
This is your birthday! The day I'm writing on I mean, of course you won't get the letter till to-morrow so what you will have to say is "yesterday was my Birthday and Doody wrote on the evening of my Birthday."
I'm not sending you any present for your Birthday because I can't afford to send two presents in one week. I am sending you a present for Xmas instead.
I am coming home to see you again soon and we'll have an awfully good time together. We might go to the Zoo together if I can get Sunday tickets.
Good night my little boy—I'm very tired and I've got to shave and have a good wash before I go to bed on the floor next to your friend Ex Corporal Willson on one side of me and with Galton and Fisher (you have met Fisher but not Galton—he is a Scotchman and likes whiskey hot before going to sleep)—with Galton and Fisher kicking me on the other side.
God bless you my dearest little man. Please please be very good to dear Mummy and your newest Nanny and please please don't ever spit. I should hate to hear that you had been spitting when I come back.
Your Doody.
III—LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON CHRISTMAS
St. Albans, Dec. 26th, 1914.
Dearest,
We have had a terrific Xmas ... tremendous work and plenty of fun. Went to Midnight Service on Xmas Eve (special leave being granted from 11 P.M. to 2 A.M. to those wanting to go, and of course I was after anything going). I know you will forgive me for not writing more often. We have really been up to our necks in work—and an alarum warned us as likely to occur on Boxing Day ... we were all packed up and ready—and indeed one battalion was entrained and another paraded for entrainment before the "warning" was withdrawn to us of the 6th Field Ambulance. Perhaps you won't understand this: it means that the fighting section of the brigade—the battalions—(which of course move off ahead of us) were not only warned but ordered—in other words we were all ordered but our order was countermanded before taking effect. Hard luck on the Battalions wasn't it? The 21st had to march 12½ miles and back for nothing, having been roused at 4 in the morning to begin with. That is the advantage of belonging to a unit that travels by "train no. 57" as we do, instead of one of the first units to go out.
I'm going to turn in. God bless you and my baby—do write soon and at length. I know posts are responsible for it but I haven't had a letter since the one containing the photos—for which many thanks—now four days ago and I am longing for one.
Bless you! Bless you!
IV—LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON LANDING IN FRANCE
France, March 18th, 1915.
Here we are in France—journey not finished yet. We had an ideal crossing—and a most amazing one. I believe every square yard of the Channel has its own British T.B. Destroyer—queer black shapes with rectangular outlines, hard and well drawn against the dark sky or the streams of light from more distant warships. I never saw one in detail with the light upon it—always in silhouette against the light. We steamed with lights out nearly all the way. I slept on deck—not over warm—but I kept getting up to see the latest sight as one or other called me and so kept warm.
We are fed on Bully Beef (ordinary Fray Bentos, you know the brand) and lovely hard biscuits which I adore. Last night I added to my menu a bloater and some bread and marmalade, "duff" and coffee—having scraped an acquaintance with some of the engine room artificers who invited me to sup in the fo'castle. It was very hot in there but we supped in low neck. Great fun!
Bye bye—Love to my blessed boy—Try to read him as much of my letters as he will understand. I do miss him so and I want him to hear about me all he can so's we shan't be strangers when we meet next. Rubbish I know, but still I'm not quite joking. He's growing so fast.
An unfortunate officer has got to read this and a hundred more letters, so I'll cut it short. Bless you.
V—LETTER TO HIS SON AT THE BATTLE-FRONT
France, March 30th, 1915.
Hullo Vallie! I'm in France at the war at last. How are you? We are having such a funny time all sleeping on straw on the floor—think of that when you get into your little cribbie-cot to-night.
I am sitting writing this on a sack on the ground with my back against Jack's. You remember Jack the cook? In front of me are all the horses in rows and rows tied to pegs driven into the ground. They are tied by the head—the way Modestine used to be—to one peg and by the hind foot to another peg to prevent them turning round and kicking each other. They don't like having their hind foots tied and pull at them and swear with their ears and top lips. You remember how your Modestine used to swear with her ears. They try to kick too, just as she used to do.
There are soldiers all about here, all busy shoving the Germans back and shoving the Germans back and SHOVING the Germans back, and sooner or later we shall shove the whole lot of them right back into Germany over the Rhine—which is a big river—bigger than the river at Maidenhead—RIGHT back into Germany and off their feet, and then we shall sit on their heads severely until they have had enough, and then the war will be over, and we shall just have to tidy up and come home and I shall come home to you my Darling and the Blessed Mummy and the nice flat at St. John's Wood, and oh, I do hope it will be soon because I want to see you and Mummy most awfully.
Good bye my precious, please give my love to Gram and tell her I wish I could have some English Turkey. And please Vallie send everybody you can out here to help shove, because the sooner the Germans are shoved over and the more of us there are to sit on their heads, the sooner I shall see you all again.
Your Doody.
VI—LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON NIGHT REVERIES
April 30th, 1915.
My Darling,
Curious situations abound. Behold me sitting in Lieut. Dickenson's chair by Lieut. Dickenson's fire in the midst of Lieut. Dickenson's deserted patience (a game unknown to me: five rows and aces out) Lieut. D. having gone forth to the Regimental Aid Post on our L. Front to see a man afflicted suddenly with peritonitis. We are a party forming an Advance Dressing Station here at ——. We have just sent our first case (Sergeant shot through chin, tongue and neck—quite conscious—hit at three, remained in trench till seven, left us 8.15—in Hospital by now) into —— together with a request for two pounds of soda for the Bat. M.O. on our R. Front. (Thus our Motor Ambulances fetch and carry). I am waiting up to take the soda when it arrives up to the M.O. at his aid post behind the trenches. Why soda in the middle of the night? Gas, my dear. Les Bosches are now throwing chunks of gas at us. Nasty smelly trick, isn't it? We are replying in our nice clean British way with soda—at least so I thought at first, but the truth is that partially asphyxiated Tommies thrive on Sodium Bi—not the washing variety. I am going to rouse out Fisher (now sleeping peacefully in the billet in spite of a battery) to walk up with me when the stuff arrives. Lieut. Dickenson won't let me go alone. It is a lovely night—high moon almost full and a low mist over the firing line through which star shells (otherwise rockets) twinkle up occasionally. The battery near here "bings" out a shell every ten minutes or so. It is a noisy brute but some naval guns over a mile away are quite deafening even at that distance. The expression "tearing the atmosphere" really applies to the scream of their shells as they pass overhead. They do sound like tearing silk heard through a stethoscope. The prettiest sound of the night is a machine-gun a mile or so to our right firing short tap tap tap tap taps like an over-grown woodpecker. Understand that these sounds are only occasional only the scattered rifle fire being anything like continuous, and that so scattered that it is a mere background. Bing! from the near battery—five minutes elapse—tap tap tap tap, another four or five—tap tap tap again—a slight increase in the rifle fire—Bahang Wheeeee! from the naval gun—ten minutes perfect calm but for rifles very faint and intermittent, tap tap tap—tap tap tap. This time from further off: the woodpecker's mate. Sh Sh Sh—Sh—Sh a German shell coming to look for our Battery. Sh Sh Sh! Whap! Missed it by about half a mile—five or six minutes peace. Bing from ours. Bing again after a minute and two more bings rapid. Peace once more, the rifles a trifle fainter, one crack a trifle louder. Tap tap tap tap tap——
That's half an hour not taken down of course but typified. I am looking forward to the walk.
VII—LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW ON HIS BOY'S FUTURE
May 28th, 1915, Empty Hospital.
Dear Gram,
Thanks very much for your letter. It is now nearly three weeks since it reached me but you will, I am sure, forgive tardiness in replying: those three weeks have been so very full of work.
Of course I have no objection to your teaching Vallie a prayer. Why should I have? Only please teach him one thing: that his prayer may not be answered and that if it isn't, he must not think that God is cruel or unmindful. "Thy will be done" is the safety valve in all prayer and a believer in God must surely think—if they do not say—those words as a part of every prayer. In the case of a child I think they should be said.
I would be grateful if you would not muddle his little brain with trinitarian dogma. I have nothing against the trinity idea except that it is puzzling and quite unnecessary. It's all right for an artist or a mystic—it can have a symbolic meaning which is most grateful but I think it should not be taught. One can be a lover of God without going into the matters of the definition of Christ; and all such difficulties. If Vallie grows up a poet or a mystic, he will fight into those problems for himself. I would rather he had the chance to do so unguided. If he is going to grow up an engineer or a farmer, he will be no poorer for never having been troubled with them.
If I don't come home you may—I mean: Please will you—teach him the Sermon on the Mount and "The Lord is my Shepherd" etc., but I have always looked forward to teaching him these myself and still hope to do so—this coming winter too.
VIII—LETTER TO HIS SON ON "SWANKING"
Vallie you villain what's this I hear about your visit to Brighton? Swanking in the Hotel about having cut the Kaiser into little bits and put him down the dust shoot. Swank Sir, you never did nothink of the sort. He's still bossing Germany and giving us no end of trouble. You must have cut up somebody else by mistake. You really should look before you chop.
Bye bye, my darling little man. I love you most muchly much. How do you like me?
Your
Doody.
IV—LETTER TO HIS DOG—HEART TO HEART
July 6th, 1915.
My Dear Emma,
Do you realise that I haven't written to you once in four months away? Do you? If you don't, I am hurt, if you do and don't mind realising it I am still more hurt. Taken either way you are a heartless little dog and you don't deserve a letter.
There is only one hope for you. You may be too proud to enquire with suitable asperity, why I have not written. I leave it to you, are you proud?
If so what of? Your ears?—I beg your pardon; I forgot Firstie. Of course you've a right to be proud after all, but I don't see your point. Why should your natural pride in Firstie be too great for you to complain of my remissness. You are illogical Emma, as well as heartless. I don't see what you're getting at.
If you see that son of mine, you might give him my love and tell him to get his hair cut. If it hasn't been cut since the photo it must be too long by now—unless it grows backwards: in which case he must have a knot tied in each hair close to his blessed little scalp to prevent it growing in too far and coming out of his chin as whiskers. Will you see to this? I don't want to come back and find my little boy sprouting a beard: he's too young for such things.
Please give my love to Mrs. Chapin with this, letter enclo. It's a silly sort of letter—a great mistake I know—but—entre nous—(that's French) I'm a silly sort of person and subject to quite idiotic moods when I start thinking about all my darlings at home in England.
Bless you all.
X—LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON WAR'S HORRORS
July 22nd, 1915.
Dearest,
I am quite incapable of doing justice to this morning's entertainment. "They" have been shelling the most thickly—and poorly—populated part of this little mining town. Some of us went up into it getting the wounded out. Houses, men, women, and children blown to pieces by huge high explosives—and more shells coming over every few minutes, all within a couple of hundred yards of the hospital. I want to tell you all I see—all that happens to me out here, but I must fail to convey it—and I don't want you quite to share my feelings. Amazing, ironic contrasts abounded: within five minutes of each other came in a self-possessed young woman of about ten to have the remains of her arm cut off—perfectly calm—walked in—never cried or showed the least excitement—and a man of fifty on a stretcher with a mangled leg who roared out in an enormous mad voice for his "Maman" over and over again till he was anæsthetised. Could any creation of the imagination equal this? Or this scene in a squalid kitchen:—a huge woman dead on her face across the threshold, a little child also dead at her feet, the legs of her men folk (husband and son?) straggling across the foot way outside (I am keeping back all the hundreds of horrible details, hard though it may be to believe it) and her remaining daughter a child of about twelve—leaping back and forth over the bodies struggling to get a chain from the neck of the body. "Souvenir!" I tried to get her away—she was half mad—but was assailed fiercely by neighbours on her behalf, who seemed to regard her desire for a memento of her mother under the circumstances, most natural and commendable. While I was being suppressed another shell came over and we went to earth in a heap, the hundred yards away crash bringing down plaster and crockery on to our heads and the flying pieces of "case" buzzing past the windows like enormous bees or small aeroplanes. When they had settled the child returned to the chain—armed now with a carving knife—and I left her to it.
XI—LAST LETTER TO HIS SON—AT THE TRENCHES
Sept. 18th, 1915.
My Son-bird, how are you? I'm quite well but a little stiff in the joints. We've been doing a lot of digging: making a trench to carry wounded people up and down, and we've walked miles and miles back from the place where we did the digging and we are tired.
We are not very near the Germans here, but we can hear them banging away in the distance sometimes, and last night all the sky was lit up in their direction by a big fire—houses burning. Yesterday—too—while we were up digging near to them some Germans climbed up a tower behind their lines, and we had to bob down into the holes we were digging to prevent them seeing us and then our cannons banged at them and they came down from the tower in a hurry.
I do hope you are a good little boy. It's so much nicer to have a good little boy at home than to have a regular little pickle. Please write and tell me if you are a good little boy—I shall be so pleased to hear it.
Love from your Doody.
XII—LAST LETTER TO HIS WIFE—AT DEATH'S DOOR
Sept. 24th, 1915.
Sweetheart Mine:
This is my ideal of happiness: (under war conditions) to arrive back, after a hard day's navvying among the nice big bangs (I really do like the noise of guns—unhealthy taste, eh?) to come back to camp and tea healthily tired, to come back by the first batch of cars thereby ensuring a wash unhurried and evading the wait by the roadside at "——" and to find a letter from you waiting for me. I am sure you think my effusions over your letters mere civil romance but they are not. I cannot exaggerate the pleasure I feel when I wade into a letter from you.
I am so very glad that you are to have the blessed with you again. I hate to think of you and him apart. It makes me feel altogether too "scattered" (compris?) to have a son here, a wife there, a mother somewhere else, a sister elsewhere. Keep him with you all you can and talk to him about me a lot. I do so want to come home to you both.
We are launching forth in many directions: beds (for patients of course) and a young drug store under a roof of its own; no longer housed with the Quarter Master's store. At present I and some score of others are going up to the line daily doing the most glorious navvying: knocking cellars into each other and whitewashing the whole into operating rooms and waiting rooms, and bearers' billets; digging special R.A.M.C. stretcher trenches to connect them (A) with the general communicating trenches and (B) with each other and filling billions of sandbags to protect the entrances to these cellar-stations. I love the work, three days I slaved at a part of the trench where it traverses a mine-yard and came back a Frank Tinney at night. Yesterday I was housebreaking with hammer and chisel or pick connecting up cellars by holes knocked in walls and making bolting holes to get in and out through. Also we go investigating the rows and rows of empty houses (the line where we work passes almost through a mining townlet now deserted) bagging chairs, mirrors—there are many quite good ones unbroken in the midst of the chaos of bent girders, scattered walls, roofs, pavements even.
Everybody seems very high-spirited out here and grumbling is a thing of the past. I suspect that the weather is reason. Day after day is glorious—though night after night is cold.
As the weather grows colder my appetite increases, cake most acceptable.
Posting this the morning after writing it. Was called away to interview M. Le Directeur des Mines apropos d'une affaire forte difficile, je vous dis.
Love to the dear—I wish I were going to see you both again soon. Wanted!—
[The above was the last letter ever received from Harold Chapin. The following unfinished letter was found in his pocket-book after his death. It was written some days before the preceding letter.]
XIII—LAST LETTER TO HIS MOTHER—AS HE DIES
Dearest Mater:
I dunno if I did or did not write to you the day after that letter to Calypso. We've had a good few days lately when 6 o'clock parade (6 o'clock a.m. you understand) and dusk were linked up by a day's work and march so that no letters were written, and I dare swear the censor was correspondingly rejoiced.
Our days spent trench digging (special communication trenches we dig, pour chercher les blessées not for wicked men with arms or what would the Geneva convention say?), our days spent trench digging are a great source of enjoyment—curious, because they involve a bolted breakfast—a seven o'clock start, an hour's jog in a hard, springless, G.S. waggon, a halting, single-file march of a couple of miles and a day of back breaking work at pick and shovel followed sometimes by march and G.S. waggon back, sometimes by a long march and no G.S. waggon. The secret of their charm is the feeling of doing something actual compared with the messing about cleaning waggons for inspection and everlastingly tidying up camp to get it dirty again. Those trenches may never be used but if ever it is necessary to bring in wounded from the fire trenches to the aid posts under anything of a bombardment they will mean endless lives saved. It's a pleasant thought. I haven't seen the Lloyd George speech you mention.—I didn't know he'd written anything lately. Do you know—coeval with his rise in popularity I am getting a bit sick of him. He strikes me as being all enthusiasm and no judgment—no sense of fitness. On the tide and with the tide of universal approval is not the best place for a Welshman. I prefer the "brave man struggling with adversity" to this popular idol playing with his admirers, being rude to them just to show how well he can apologise, etc., etc.
Books—yes, I want a pocket Browning mit everything in it! Is such a thing to be had, I wonder? Of course I've got sizable pockets. Still it's a tall order.
Anyway I want "Paracelsus" and "Men and Women" particularly. I am on guard and writing letters for the next two or three days (I may only send off one a day). Our supply of corporals is not quite adequate to the demands made upon it and this will be my fourth night on guard in a fortnight.—Rather fatiguing work, involving a night of cat naps fully dressed and booted and a final rise at a little after 4 a.m. to call the cooks and "duties," hoist the flag and remove the lamps and finally (at 5 a.m.) to call the camp in general.
Later
(Sunday in fact)
Oh, my dear, I wish you could see your golden-haired laddie sitting by the roadside waiting for a waggon,—time 5 p.m.
I have been for two days digging through the slag heap of a mine! A mine! Our trench happens to go that way. I am as black as a coal heaver.