War Letters of a Public-School Boy

by Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

We had a very jolly Christmas. The revellings have, in fact, only just begun to subside. Our Brigade Major spent his Christmas in the trenches along with his brother, a V.C. In that part of the line there was a truce for a quarter of an hour on Christmas Day, and a number of Englishmen and Germans jumped out and started talking together. A German gave one of our men a Christmas tree about two feet high as a souvenir. It is of the usual variety, covered with tinsel and adorned with glass balls.

January 4th, 1916.

I was indescribably grieved to read of the death of Nightingale.[5] Himself an O.A., he was in the Modern Sixth about 1900. He was a master at the dear old school from 1907, or thereabouts. I regarded him as one of my best friends among the masters. The year I took on the captaincy of the Junior School "footer," he gave me immense help as master in charge of the Junior School games. But really cricket was his game; he was a splendid bat on his day, a useful slow bowler and a fine fieldsman. He was such an enthusiast for cricket that he would take any and every chance of playing, no matter whether against the 1st XI or against the Junior School. In character he was extremely simple and unaffected—not a great scholar, but a shrewd thinker with a serviceable knowledge of history and literature, and a fine taste in reading. Personally he was one of the kindest of men and so easy to get on with. Though in no sense a professional soldier, yet from a strong feeling of duty he joined right at the start as a private in, I believe, the Rifle Brigade, with whom he served many months in France. He then got a commission in the 7th Lincolns, with whom he was serving when killed.

Here was a man who threw up all to take up soldiering, not because he had the military instinct, but from sheer patriotism and sense of duty. It was just like him—at school he would always put himself out to play in a game if a team was a man short. He was always called "Nighty" by the boys. Can you wonder, with the example of such a man before me, that I should be longing to get into the Infantry? Heavens! A man would not be a man who did not feel as I feel about this matter.

Well, Sir John Simon has resigned. Rather a pity that such a career should be cut short. Still, at best he was a mere politician, and to tell you the truth I don't like politicians much. All the same, I do think Simon did some valuable work as Home Secretary, and earlier as Attorney-General.

For once the British Government appears to have acted with vigour—I mean by occupying Salonika and telling the Greeks politely to "hop it." Result, the Greeks have hopped it. How much more simple and effective this than to jaw about "the rights of neutrals," the "sanctity of small nations," etc., etc.! No! take a strong line in this world, and you're more likely to get what you want than by cajolery.

January 26th, 1916.

One day last week I mounted my horse at 2.15 P.M. and rode in a south-easterly direction. For the first couple of miles things were as usual—crowds of soldiers about, of course, and lots of transport on the move. One village I found populated half by civilians and half by troops. Thereafter the country becomes barer and grimmer, and the fields for the most part are uncultivated—in itself a remarkable thing in France. The next village I came to bore signs of having been shelled, but was still habitable. Originally it must have been quite a pleasant little place. Not many of the native inhabitants remained, and the houses for the most part were filled with Scotsmen and sappers.

Passing on, with the roar of the guns getting more and more distinct, we come to a place that leaves no manner of doubt that there is a war on. There are graves by the roadside, and shell-holes. Lines of trenches and coils of barbed wire arrest your attention. Now there comes into view the battered remnant of what was once a busy mining village. The great slag-heap towers up on our right hand, its sides scarred and smashed by shell-fire. Not a house is left standing. There are only shattered walls and heaps of bricks. Over all hangs that curious odour one gets at the Front—a sort of combined smell of burning and decay. A grotesque effect is produced by a signboard hanging outside a ruined tenement and bearing the words: "Delattre, Débitant," or, in other words, "Delattre's Inn." On the right a gunner is standing on what was once a house roof, hacking away at the beams with a pickaxe; he is getting firewood, no doubt. Solemnly a general service wagon rolls by, carrying a load of fuel, and a limber crashes past at a trot. A little single-line railway from the colliery crosses the road, and even now there are standing on it two or three trucks, strange to say quite intact. The machinery at the pit-head is all smashed, bent and broken. You are impressed with the strange, eerie silence, when suddenly there is an earth-shaking crash. One of our heavies has been fired. You hear the shell whirring away on its journey of destruction, and finally a faint, far-distant crash, perhaps marking the end of a dozen men, five or ten miles off.

Resuming my journey I reached another village, where the destruction had been simply terrible, surpassing even that of Ypres. This village bears a name famous in the annals of British arms, for it was from here that the Guards charged on that memorable day, September 25th. I saw a line of old trenches just behind the village, and rode over to examine them. Perhaps it was from this very line that our men advanced. I tried to picture to myself what it must have been like—valour, endurance, turmoil, destruction, death, a great forward rush by brave men that spent itself, and fizzled out just on the eve of triumph. Why?