Oh, it’s one of those days, today: five different entries–and two numbered lists! But it’s not all bad…
First, a grateful return. Edward Heron-Allen‘s whirlwind tour of liberated France and Belgium has come to an end. After seeing nothing of the war for several years but rural drill grounds and London offices, he saw more of the famous towns behind the British front in a single week than all but a handful of well-traveled warriors would have seen the whole war long. After a long day made longer by an officious transport officer in Boulogne, Heron-Allen crossed in the late afternoon, and was at his London home by 9:30.
No words can express what a privilege I consider it to be, to have been afforded this opportunity of seeing the war at close quarters. I look upon the visit to the battle areas as more than ample recompense for giving up my independence and my scientific work for six months. It was the one thing needful to conclude–to crown–this journal of impressions of the Great War–for I feel, I know, that the war is very near its end. If I had had to wait another fortnight I should never have got out to France…[1]
Our most distinguished Persian translator/Forminaferan expert is, again, rather uncannily accurate in his assessment of grand strategy and the affairs of nations.
Wilfred Owen‘s horizon is much more limited. As in several recent letters, his patience seems short, and his two concerns are largely to get what he needs for his return to the real fighting and to reassure his mother that he is not there yet, and in no danger.
29 October 1918
Dearest Mother,
Through so much marching I have not been able to write for a day or two. I don’t want to send Field Cards in case you suppose they mean in the Line. In future, however, a F. Card will be no proof that I am actually there…
Your last letters were the two with the Permang: & the Boric. Many many thanks for sending this so quickly.
Yesterday evening I hear the post corporal fell into a river; I understand the letters are alright, but haven’t got any yet…
But now the letter rounds into focus. It still goes on. People are still dying, and Owen is angry. If his poetry–especially his most-read poetry–can sometimes seem to concentrate intensely on the suffering of the troops, there is no such solipsism here. The continuation of a stalemate would mean that the soldiers suffer alone–but the continuation of a war of movement through unevacuated country means that, in the best old European tradition, the peasantry will suffer with them.
The civilians here are a wretched, dirty crawling community, afraid of us some of them, and no wonder after the shelling we gave them 3 weeks go.
Did I tell you that five healthy girls died of fright in one night at the last village. The people in England and France who thwarted a peaceable retirement of the enemy from these areas are therefore now sacrificing aged French peasants and charming French children to our guns. Shells made by women in Birmingham are at this moment burying little children alive not very far from here.
Owen slashes toward the heart of the matter. When does pitching in to the war effort in a righteous war become morally compromised participation in the military-industrial complex?
It is rumoured that Austria has really surrendered. The new soldiers cheer when they hear these rumours but the old ones bite their pipes, and go on cleaning their rifles, unbelieving.
Not quite, but soon.
…For my next parcel, will Mary please get:
(1 small bottle Tatcho
(1 „ Oatine
(1 pair cork boot-socks, size 6.
(20 Players.
(Chocolate.
But Owen’s righteous anger has wandered, now. He’s part of the machine now, and far more deeply implicated than those “munitionettes.” But he’s getting on with it. And he remembers, in the end, not a horrible detail but a clever line he has already shared with his cousin.
…Siegfried sent me a little book which he had in France. Offered a job in War Propaganda under Beaverbrook he wrote to B’s, private sec. saying he had no qualifications for such work, except that he had been wounded in the head.
So glad you liked Tolstoy.
All my dearest love, my darling Mother. W.E.O.[2]
Next we have Olaf Stapledon, who is perhaps even more consistent than Owen in reassuring she who loves him best while still avoiding outright lies about the horrors of the war. But there is no room, here, for reassurance. Just as with Owen, the fact that it is nearly over makes its horrors all the more unbearable. One wonders what awful details Stapledon may be suppressing, here, as his ambulance continues to jolt along behind the French advance.
29 October 1918
. . . Blood is getting on my nerves. I sympathise with Lady Macbeth in her futile efforts to cleanse it. . . . Oh heavens, but I am sick of dealing with shattered human beings. Always noise and blood and agonies, & each single little tragedy is such a mere atom of the whole, & yet so very great in itself. . . .[3]
Also going forward is Alfred Hale. His work as an officer’s servant now extends to striking out toward his squadron’s new base as part of the advance party. But Hale has realized his unique situation: his incompetence is no longer something to be remedied but merely to be minimized. The sergeant in charge has also been “obviously asked… to dry-nurse me.” Hale once again acknowledges that he is a burden rather than a help–and he is grateful not to be humiliated in his incompetence. Of this sergeant’s “dry-nursing” he writes: “I have not forgotten his kindness, or ever shall.”
Hale has seen nothing of the devastated areas yet. How will this gentle, musical fellow, turned from his comfy hole in comfortable middle age to be dragged along on a quest, describe what he sees? Memorably–and it’s wonderful to compare his hazy reverie to Heron-Allen’s recent expedition.[4]
…we began very obviously to get nearer and nearer the realities of the War. In the distance the great guns ceaselessly rumbled, and each village… seemed more and more desolate-looking and deserted than the last…
It’s important to remember what we can hardly forget: that these experiences are all so subjective. The guns “ceaselessly” rumbling? Probably not. There are no major attacks going on right now, and the artillery is struggling to keep up with the advance. We will soon learn that Hale’s unit is fourteen days behind the retreating Germans, which suggests more than a few miles of empty air between him and the guns. So an experienced infantryman might guffaw at the idea of “nearer and nearer,” but how could Hale know any better?
Then even the heaps by the roadside that were once villages ceased to exist, and we entered No-Man’s Land. As far as the eye could reach was one vast plain, the terrible wastage of war, without a blade of grass or tree to be seen… I felt like being in a vast shallow saucer, of which the horizon on either side composed the rim… I sat down by the roadside on what was obviously the remains of a German dug-out, and had my meal thus, with the grey, sunless, autumn light over everything. Apparently we had strayed by accident into a recently cleared and tidied up battlefield…
After some MPs put them right–for once the mistake is not Hale’s fault–they escape the battlefield. He’s like a child among the ruins: this reads like memories of childhood, not the memoirs of a strange middle-aged interval “in parentheses.”
…soon after that we left the waste of battleground behind. The I recollect being quite comfortable and happy, sitting in a half-reclining position against the box of stores, while close to me was a large Huntley & Palmer biscuit tin! The weather being fine we had the lorry completely open with no hood up. I was really quite warm enough in my greatcoat and enjoying it all. I was quite sorry when we entered the village that was to be our destination…[5]
A definite anticlimax, now (with apologies) as we must keep up with Herbert Read‘s very different week in London. He is deep into charting the course of English Modernism, and he writes to Evelyn Roff with great excitement about what this future holds: himself, with some help from Ezra Pound–and funded by the Sitwells–setting up shop at the center of it all…
29.x.18
Now, before I can be intelligible, I must explain how far I have got with the future.
Decided:
(1) To chuck the Army.
(2) To take over the working secretaryship of the Allied Artists Association…
(3) To further develop the AAA by opening a permanent Gallery…
(4) If possible to run in conjunction with the Gallery a publishing and book-selling business…
Meanwhile the war had better hurry off the scene.[6]