Siegfried Sassoon has pledged himself to slowing down and simplifying: he will focus on his men, and think about nothing but the “groove” that an infantry subaltern finds himself in. This sounds rather like a too-obvious metaphor for a trench… and the trenches are coming up awfully fast, now.
May 24
Magnicourt. ‘Yesterday’ began at 2.30 a.m. and ended at 11 p.m. when our Company were safely settled down in their billets after twenty miles’ marching and five hours in the train (covered trucks). We left Domvast at 5 a.m…
We are about twenty kilometres behind the Arras-Albert sector, and ten kilometres from Lucheux, where I passed with the Second Battalion toward Arras in April 1917. But we have just received orders to march again to-morrow!
Sassoon is merely noting the acceleration–an old soldier won’t complain about simple marching!
The next bit of the diary is interesting. Many soldiers carry “last letters” to be discovered on their bodies and sent to their loved ones. But Sassoon, entirely focused, now, on being a good officer, carries a testimonial.
Note on my servant (I put this in in case I was killed, for Law’s benefit).
I have been saved from innumerable small worries and exasperations in the last ten weeks by my servant, 355642 Private John Law. He is the perfect servant. Nothing could be better than the way he does things, quiet and untiring. I can imagine him figuring as an ideal ‘patient’ in one of Duhamel’s hospital interiors. Of him it might have been written: ‘He waged his own war with the divine patience of a man who had waged the great world war, and who knows that victory will not come right away.’ He is simple, humble, brave, patient and loving: he is reticent, yet humorous. How many of us can claim to possess these things, and ask no reward but a smile?
I could just see Private Law presenting his credentials to a future officer–“In my last position, sir, I gave perfect satisfaction–and I was compared to an ideal patient in a French novel.”
We’ll skip the next Duhamel quote and get back to Sassoon–in the groove, but not so far down into the groove that he can’t see his bookshelf, and think of the more complex problem of satisfaction in the indoor, literary realm. As always, with Sassoon, we tiptoe right up to the final edge of unbearable hauteur and solipsism… and grin knowingly at the view… and fall back on a reserve position:
I glance over my right shoulder at my little row of books, red and green and blue; they stand waiting for my hand, offering their accumulated riches. I think of the years that may be in store for me, and of all the pages I may turn. Then I look put at the falling rain and the grey evening beyond the churchyard wall, and I wonder if there is anything awaiting me that will be truer or more human than my feeling of satisfaction yesterday. What was the thing I did to win that satisfaction? There were five of my men on the train who had come too late for their tea. They had stared disconsolate at an empty ‘dixie’, tired out by the long march and herded into a dirty van to travel toward hell. But I was able to get some tea for them. Alone I did it. Without my help they would have had none. And I was proud of myself. It is these little things, done for nameless soldiers, that make the war bearable. So I sit and wonder if I’m really a good chap, or only rather a humbug….[1]
Cynthia Asquith’s first tour of duty as a night nurse has come to an end. (I don’t know why she has leave after only a few weeks, unless she is not really serving under ordinary V.A.D. rules.) She’s barely had her toes wet–a few long nights, one gruesome wound–and yet she is already experiencing a small degree of the veteran’s discomfort: happy to be away, yet feeling the pull of the other side of the gulf, the place where the action is, where life is more intense…
Wednesday, 22nd May
… My last night on duty—uneventful, except that the heat was so appalling that we sat with our tongues hanging out, and I was very tired and sleepy. Sister Orde went off early leaving me in charge. Had it not been that I am returning in a fortnight, I should have felt very sad at leaving the hospital—as it is, bedtime is rather a pleasant prospect. I have loved it, to an extent that puzzles me. I quite understand one’s liking for the human interest side of it and the absorbing, feverish desire to satisfy the Sister and please the men, but I rather wonder why one enjoys the sink, tray, Lysol, bustle side of it quite so much.
Speaking of latecomers who are just getting their feet wet, Duff Cooper has good news to report from his first tour in the trenches.
…I was glad to find that I was no more frightened than other people and I really think rather less so–especially, I must confess–after dinner. The weather was wonderful…
On May 24 when we were back in rest my letters began to arrive and after that they came frequently in large instalments. Diana has not failed to write every single day since I left–all long and most delightful letters.[2]
Well, here’s another delightful one, winging its way toward him, in which Diana Manners deploys her considerable charm toward making making fun of mental patients seem not quite as awful as it is:
Guy’s, May 24
I have one advantage over your sister Steffie in that I do not have to retire for an hour daily to think on you, but manage to do it day and night with no effort and in all companies. So if this simple method is to keep you safe you are strongly accoutred.
There is a woman here, who because her husband failed in the carpentering business has lost her memory to the extent of not being able to remember whether she has had her dinner, or been washed or anything. It worries her terribly, especially the terror of doing something twice. Such a condition would not suit me now, but it might have had its advantages if we had forgotten we had been to Victoria Road, or had dinner, and fun for Keats if he’d forgotten his impressions of Chapman and was able to come over queer every morning.[3]
Actually, that’s a pretty good idea for a novel of ideas about a poet, artistic creation, memory, and originality…