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The Cloth Hall, Ypres, probably 1918
Edward Heron-Allen had a very full day, today, a century back. He and the journalists he is accompanying (and debunking) drove through no fewer than thirteen towns, including St Omer, Poperinghe and Menin. But of course it is Ypres that grabs his attention, and leaves him as our flabbergasted surrogate, overwhelmed by the physical realities of the war.
Then we reached Ypres, which I was most particularly anxious to see–but having seen it I realised that words can hardly describe it. I thought I had seen absolute devastation and ruin at Bapaume and Péronne, but Ypres by comparison is as the Sahara to a sand dune… When, passing though some mounds of rubbish I asked where we were and was told ‘This is Ypres’, it absolutely turned me cold. Even the streets are obliterated…
Heron-Allen finds the now single-story Cloth Hall and the pile of the rubble that was the Cathedral.
I picked up a bit of glazed brick and a fragment of a shell as a souvenir…
The older mounds of rubbish, dating from September, 1914… are overgrown with weeds, and that is all that diversifies this desert–the older the ruins, the thicker the weeds, that is all. I waded through the mud of Flanders–which fully bears out all that has been written about it–to the car, very much saddened and impressed and we left Ypres between two small leveled heaps of ruins which had once been the Menin gate.[1]
While Heron-Allen confronts the material destruction of the war, everyone else, today, is preoccupied with maintaining the relationships that the war has so heavily stressed. Diana Manners has been consumed by worry since the time that (as she she believed) Duff Cooper might have returned to combat. Of course, that would allay other worries–it’s harder to lose your shirt gambling in a dugout than a casino. Three nights ago, a century back, she wrote this:
…I feel near tears and despairing this evening, perhaps because I have not been to bed till 2 a.m. for so many nights that my nerves are feeble. Dudley told me you had lost £200 at Mr Dod, of all idiotic games. O darling, it isn’t faithful of you. I ask no other whimsical boons. Do humour me there. Is it to be an obstacle to happiness all my life?
And today, a century back (with at least one more letter in the interim), her despair was more general than personal.
Arlington Street October 22
No letter today and Peace fading into dimmer future. They think here that the last note was humility exemplified. Your leave will be my armistice. Does it loom?[2]
And Duff? Well, he’s on his way back to the front, but he’s not there yet. No armistice to save him from the shells, and no shelling to save him from himself. Today, a century back, he combines his worst instincts with his poor judgment, which he confides to his diary rather than to dear, distant Diana…
After lunch the battalion moved back to Boussières. It was a tiresome march… I got a note from Oliver Lyttleton asking me to dine… we had a pleasant dinner and played bridge afterwards. I bet Claud Sykes £100 to £25 that there would not be peace before Christmas.
So that’s £300, no bad luck at cards required, plus whatever he lost gambling in Paris. Which is going to make marriage that much harder to achieve. Spendthrift, rake, and lousy gambler that he is, it’s hard to blame Duff for his low mood.
I forgot to say that the first news which greeted me on my return to the Battalion was that Peter Adderley had just died of wounds. It really does seem that all my friends are marked out for death. A succession of calamities has left me callous–I was really fond of Peter and yet I felt that I could not feel his death.[3]
While Duff Cooper grieves and neglects his most important relationship, Wilfred Owen tends to his, his letter of today, a century back, running from upbeat filial solicitousness into a reverie of return.
Tues. Mng; 22 October 1918 (Same kitchen)
Dearest Mother,
Two days ago I was thinking a great deal of your Restoration to health, and even managed to mention it, I believe! This is fine news of your visit to Dr. Armitage.
Let nothing waver you from your treatment…
Now the reverie. Thinking about his mother’s recuperation throws Owen’s mind forward–and soon he, too, is thinking of Christmastime. He has developed an interest in decoration, and attended several antiques auctions in Scarborough, buying old treasures at distressed wartime prices. So, while he can’t be present himself to comfort her, Owen can imagine his new possessions, shipped home when he shipped out, offering a vicarious solace:
About the end of November you will start to move about your room. Your room must be arranged. All my Articles of Vertue which you like are to represent me there. My Jacobean Chest; (why not ?) my carpets; my tall candlesticks; my pictures; my tables; have them all in.
About Christmas you will start the hardening processes. You will lengthen your walks and your paces. You will grow keen with the keenness of frost and cold, blue sunlight. So you will be ready, early in February, for my Leave. We will walk to Haughmond, and while you are resting on the top, I will run round the Wrekin and back, to warm
my feet.For even were Prussianism removed from London & Berlin and Peace happened before Christmas, I should not get home before January or February…
We move from here in a few hours not for the front… you must not conclude I am in the fighting zone. It is unlikely for a considerable time, time even for the British Government & its accomplices to save their Nations.
W.E.O. x
P.S. Thank you for everything in parcel, except socks which I had spared & exempted as unfit last August.[4]
It’s still shocking, that last bit, and a terrible rent in their relationship: she has sent him old, ill-darned socks. Where is the love?
Finally, today, Olaf Stapledon, little knowing that Agnes Miller has decided to hasten to him as soon as circumstances allow, is worn out by both the hypocrisies and the miseries of the front.
22 October 1918
. . . We have had another batch of citations. In fact about a quarter of the convoy sports the red and green ribbon now. The last three were earned, but some of the others have not been. In fact there have been scandals of a mild nature. Please note I shall never get one because my presence always has such a pacific influence that wherever I go the shelling stops!
Is this a joke, coming from a mystic such as Stapledon? Is he so tired of war that he will leave these discussions of fate strewn about like barely-touched meals?
…But the thing is now so horribly cheap that the glamour is wearing off, save for the ever-undecorated old fossils like Sparrow and me. Of course Sparrow should have had one before several people that have got them but he has never had the luck (?) to meet the necessary dramatic incident. He and I, on the sour-grapes principle, have decided we don’t want one now. . . .
But it still goes on, as Owen has reminded us. And as Olaf does now. Even an ambulance driver whose presence stills the shells can still suffer, at one very close remove, the agonies of war and the trauma. And he, too, must make decisions freighted with the life or death of other human beings.
Last night as I was going to sleep in my car I thought of the last person who had lain where I was lying. He was a tall, thin, blue-eyed, spectacled, intellectual-looking man who had been badly wounded. When we had loaded the car he called for the priest (a friend of mine) and asked him to kiss him. The priest did so, gently, pitifully, and murmured a prayer over him. Then we got under way, and I was perplexed whether to go slow to save him pain, or fast to save his life. I tried both in turn, & finally made a compromise. But it was a long and bumpy journey. When we had almost finished it the other men inside rattled the window to call my attention. I stopped & opened the window.
One said, “Je crois qu’il meurt.” [I think he is dying.]
Pause. “Oui, je crois qu’il est mort.” [Yes, I think he died.]
Pause. So I said (for there was nothing else to do), “Alors il n’y-a rien a faire. II n’y a qu’a filer.” [Well, there’s nothing to do. Nothing but to speed.]
So we proceeded, I now going at full speed since there was no chance of hurting him, & there might still be a chance of saving him. I nearly had a smash through scorching. We arrived & unloaded; and surely the man was quite dead, with his eyes still bright & blue and half open, and dust all over his spectacles.[5]