Adventures of a Despatch Rider

by William Henry Lowe Watson

This book is not a history, a military treatise, an essay, or a scrap of autobiography. It has no more accuracy or literary merit than letters usually possess. So I hope you will not judge it too harshly. My only object is to try and show as truthfully as I can the part played in this monstrous war by a despatch rider during the months from August 1914 to February [Pg x]1915. If that object is gained I am content.

Because it is composed of letters, this book has many faults.

Firstly, I have written a great deal about myself. That is inevitable in letters. My mother wanted to hear about me and not about those whom she had never met. So do not think my adventures are unique. I assure you that if any of the other despatch riders were to publish their letters you would find mine by comparison mild indeed. If George now could be persuaded...!

Secondly, I have dwelt at length upon little personal matters. It may not interest you to know when I had a pork-chop—though, as you now realise, on active service a pork-chop is extremely important—but it interested my mother. She liked to know whether I was having good and sufficient food, and warm things on my chest and feet, because, after all, there was a time when I wanted nothing else.

Thirdly, all letters are censored. This book contains nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth. When I described things that were actually happening round me, I had to be exceedingly careful—and when, as in the first two or three chapters, my letters were written several weeks after the events, [Pg xi]something was sure to crop up in the meantime that unconsciously but definitely altered the memory of experiences....

We have known together two of the people I have mentioned in this book—Alec and Gibson. They have both advanced so far that we have lost touch with them. I had thought that it would be a great joy to publish a first book, but this book is ugly with sorrow. I shall never be able to write "Alec and I" again—and he was the sweetest and kindest of my friends, a friend of all the world. Never did he meet a man or woman that did not love him. The Germans have killed Alec. Perhaps among the multitudinous Germans killed there are one or two German Alecs. Yet I am still meeting people who think that war is a fine bracing thing for the nation, a sort of national week-end at Brighton.

Then there was Gibson, who proved for all time that nobody made a better soldier than the young don—and those whose names do not come into this book....

Robert, you and I know what to think of this Brighton theory. We are only just down from Oxford, and perhaps things strike us a little more passionately than they should.[Pg xii]

You have seen the agony of war. You have seen those miserable people that wander about behind the line like pariah dogs in the streets. You know what is behind "Tommy's invincible gaiety." Let us pray together for a time when the publishing of a book like this will be regarded with fierce shame.

So long and good luck!