Sisters' diaries shed light on provincial life in WW1 Britain

Weymouth Pavilion, where Madge Sneyd-Kynnersly watched
'Prisoner Of Zenda' and heard a Russian exile speak in 1915.
This fine building was destroyed by fire in 1954

Among the most popular characters in my new book Weymouth, Dorchester and Portland in the Great War are four Weymouth sisters whose diaries and snapshots I've used throughout to illustrate how war became part of everyday life at home. The Sneyd-Kynnersley sisters - Kitty, Sylvia, Madge and Rosie -  lived with their widowed mother and were in their late teens and early twenties when war was declared. All kept pocket diaries which, during the war, contained frequent references to the fighting and to casualties - especially when people they knew were involved.

In my previous post I included entries from Madge's 1915 diary in which she writes about the Battle of Loos. In this post I have transcribed (below) another week from Madge's diary which this time makes no direct mention of the war. But these entries, written exactly 100 years ago between 18-24 October 1915, are just as fascinating because they document the social history of the time, as well as Madge's very busy life!

Madge Sneyd-Kynnersley

The entries make reference to her work as a private tutor and the fact that, during her spare time, she was learning shorthand and typing in order to find office work. She talks about gramophones (hugely popular during the Great War), fashion, playing bridge, and going to the pictures. The conflict still manages to creep in, but subtly... for example in the mention of 'patriotic' handkerchiefs given as a birthday gift, and a flag day held to raise money for wounded Russian soldiers and the Red Cross. The unpredictable policitcal situation in Russia is also evident in her reference to a talk given by a Russian exile, Alexis Aladin.

Monday, 18 October: Taught. Shorthand at 6pm, afterwards calling on Simons, and town with mother [shops stayed open well into the evening]. M Onslow [a friend] to supper and bridge.

Winter fashions and furs, 1915

Tuesday, 19 October: Taught. Dentist. Sylvie's birthday: many happy returns of day. Mother gave her Onoto [a make of pen], Kitty patriotic hankies, Rosie cigarette lighter, me Turkish delight, gold hairpin case for vanity bag. M.Onslow to bridge with streaming cold.

Wednesday, 20 October: Taught for last time. Got paid 3 guineas and Lady H. [Madge's employer] said Betty had so enjoyed it! Tea with the Bragges, sat in kitchen with gramophone and saw their new clothes and furs.

Thursday, 21 October: Red Cross and Russian Flag Day. Mother having a district, I sold around Greenhill, got a good deal but wet day unluckily. Mina and Miss Chapman selling in pack, also Sylive, Ida W and Morris boys selling. Thousands sold at St Johns Schools where kids illegally sold in streets beyond our district! Very good lecture at Pav [Weymouth Pavilion] by Russian member of Duma Alexis Aladin, awfully interesting and funny broken English, us selling programmes etc. Tea at Mayor's expense in Balcony with M.Sanctuary [a friend]. Taxi home - wet day.

A wartime advert for gramophones

Friday, 22 October: Dentist  at12. Fitted at Crabbe [outfitter] for old blue skirt for which he has made a hip-yolk [dress alteration]. Prisoner of Zenda and tea at Pav.

Saturday, 23 October: Wet day. Sylvie and I went to Tiny Morgan's wedding. Smart. She in short frock. Then pictures at Jubilee [Hall]. Good. Jungle [possible reference to1915 silent movie, 'Perils of the Jungle']. Cooncan [card game] at Onslows.

Sunday, 24 October: Wet day.

The Sneyd-Kynnersleys' WW1 diaries reveal in colourful detail how family life was affected by the war. They describe everything from food shortages, blackouts, and 'spy mania', to new opportunities for women in the workplace, and the Spanish 'flu epidemic which devastated homes at the end of the conflict. You can read more in my new book Weymouth, Dorchester and Portland in the Great War.

Pages from Madge Sneyd-Kynnersley's 1915 diary

Copyright © 2015 Jacqueline Wadsworth

No escape in my new book: the relentless story of life at war

My new book: a story of life at war

The Great War Centenary is well into its second year and now that the commemorations of 2014 have died down, we historians are in the happy position of being able to return to normal life, while still 'switching on' every now and again for the various anniversaries such as Gallipoli, last April, and the more recent Battle of Loos.

But those who lived through those dreadful years were not as fortunate. For them, the war was their lives, there was no escape, and even those who remained at home found their everyday routine was coloured by the conflict. It is this story I have endeavoured to tell in my latest book, Weymouth, Dorchester & Portland in the Great War, in which dramatic tales of spies, PoWs, and hospital scandal are described alongside more predictable scenes of ordinary life.

No-one described such scenes better than a Weymouth family called the Sneyd-Kynnersleys, whose diaries I used throughout the book to add colour and humour. The head of the household was Margaret, a widow of independent means who originally came from Northumberland, and who brought her four daughters south when her husband died. The girls - Kitty, Sylvia, Madge, and Rosie - were in their late teens and early twenties when war was declared and immediately volunteered as Red Cross nurses. Their pocket diaries give brief summaries for each day, noting domestic details alongside great events in Europe that were being reported in the newspapers at the time.

Madge Sneyd-Kynnersley

Below are entries from Madge's diary from the beginning of October 1915. They open with a reference to casualties from the recently-launched Battle of Loos in northern France, and go on to mention the political situation in Greece, and the difficulties faced by the British War Office in recruiting army volunteers. On the domestic front, Madge was battling constant toothache while helping to nurse wounded soldiers, teaching as a private tutor, and training to become a secretary - a job she hoped would be more fulfilling.

Her spare time was spent blackberrying with her sisters, entertaining friends to tea, playing bridge, and keeping in touch with Spencer, her husband-to-be who was a naval officer serving aboard the battleship HMS Ajax.

Friday, October 1

Pages from Madge's 1915 diary 

Germans have 120,000 casualties in this last week's fighting!!
Taught.
Sylvia and I went over Lodmore to get blackberries but very few.
Massandra [Hospital] 7-10pm, as Mina said so short-handed, but really heaps of nurses so came home early (8.30). Many new patients at Massandra who were fighting on Sunday - some sleeping on floor!

Saturday, October 2
Taught in morning only, very wet day.
Kings to tea. Then Rosie and I went to great Recruting meeting in Alexandra Gardens - (last attempt of voluntary service?) Patriotic band and speeches by Gens Pink and Johnson and the Mayor etc. They got about 10 recruits, including a policeman and an old man from Co-operative Stores with two sons fighting.

Sunday, October 3
St Johns [Church] 8.30am & 11am. Wet day.

Monday, 4 October
Taught. Dentist 12.30.
Went with M.Onslow [a friend] to first shorthand class, very difficult.

Tuesday, October 5
Taught. Dentist 12.30, two teeth stopped [filled].
Bulgaria coming in against us.
Sylvia and I to Bridge [card game] with Mrs Davis, Mrs Yates, and a boy from Spain. M.Lithgow there.

Wednesday, October 6
Mrs O had letter with form to fill in from London Board of Trade about posts in military hospitals.
Letter from Spencer.
Taught. Norrises to tea.

Thursday, October 7
In afternoon, town with Rosie to get her fitted [for a dress]. Lithgows to tea. Horrible King of Greece [Constantine, brother-in-law of the German Kaiser] has dismissed Venizelos (pro-Ally, premier) so they won't come to aid of Serbia as per treaty.

Friday, October 8
Photo of Ajax officers from Spencer.
Dentist 12.30, tooth stopped and bad tooth painted.
Town in afternoon, bought scent and writing paper.
Learnt shorthand.
Mary Sanctuary to tea, Mrs Chris Russell at Princess Christian Hospital told her, her brother in law was so awfully keen on me, but didn't think it fair to propose in war time!!!

***

A few days later, on October 13, Madge reported: 'Zep raid on London last night, 150 about casualties.' This raid - one of many on Britain during the war - had involved five airships and killed 71 Londoners. Despite such depressing war news, however, Madge did have something to smile about at the end of the month. After weeks of visiting the dentist she finally wrote on October 30: 'Tooth out with cocaine [used as anaesthetic], old wisdom, it didn't hurt, but bled all afternoon and evening.'

You can read more of Madge's diary, and those of her sisters and mother, in Weymouth, Dorchester & Portland in the Great War, which has just been published by Pen and Sword Books - one of their very popular 'Towns and Cities in the Great War' series. Extracts from the Sneyd-Kynnersley diaries also appear in my first book Letters from the Trenches.

Copyright © 2015 Jacqueline Wadsworth

'The village of Loos was a mass of ruins, death and destruction'

Fred Silvester's cousin Maggie, in white 

This autumn's 100th anniversary of the Battle of Loos has prompted much to be written about the offensive, the largest to be launched by the British on the Western Front in 1915. Known as 'The Big Push', it began on 25 September and the aim was to restore a war of movement to a conflict that had become mired in the trenches. The battle was fought in and around the town of Loos, in north-east France, and was part of a much larger Allied attack on German lines in the Artois and Champagne region.

This was the first time the British used poison gas (chlorine) against the enemy. It also saw the first mass engagement of Kitchener's New Army volunteers on the battlefront. But despite initial successes, troops soon became bogged down in attritional fighting and, when the offensive was finally called off in October, the British had suffered 50,000 casualties. German losses were estimated to be much lower, at just half of the British total.

Fighting at Loos, where the British first used poison gas

Those are the facts viewed from a historical perspective100 years later ... but what was it like for soldiers who were actually there, fighting on the ground? Lance Corporal Fred Silvester described it all to his cousin, Maggie, in a letter I discovered while researching my book Letters from the Trenches.

Fred was a shipping clerk from Herne Hill, London, who enlisted as a volunteer with the First Surrey Rifles when war broke out. Maggie lived in Wallasey, on Merseyside, and although no picture of Fred exists, a family photo still survives that shows his cousin as a girl (above).

Below is the letter she received from Fred, dated 21 October 1915:

 "After reading about the big advance and the capture of Loos, no doubt you wondered if our regiment took part in it, Yes we did. The Territorials [Fred's was a Territorial unit] led off the attack – our own division, namely the 47th – and three lines of German trenches were captured, also many prisoners and guns, before being held up. Our battalion did not go forward at first but gave covering fire to protect those going forward and draw the enemy fire on ourselves. We went into Loos two days after the advance to relieve some of the Guards and found the village a mass of ruins, death and destruction being everywhere. Of course the Germans shelled us very heavily and we had some lucky escapes – one big shell dropped about 10 yds from us and must have wiped out many but fortunately for us who were near it did not explode. This is quite a common occurrence with German shells now.

"Our battalion were relieved from the trenches last Saturday night for a 48 hours rest and on arriving at a billet found awaiting for me your splendid parcel which was very welcome, so please accept my very best thanks. We came up to the line again on Monday night and for certain reasons found that a new firing  had to be made in front of us and this of course had to be done under cover of darkness so the peppermints and lozenges came in very handy for the nights are very chilly and one cannot work continually, although willing, at such a violent exercise.

"When it came to our turn to be relieved we had been about 30 days in the trenches and part of this time the weather was very bad, raining continually and sometimes the water was up to our thighs in the communication trenches so you can guess we were glad to get out for a while.

"You ask me about my promotion. Yes it does entail more work and more responsibility for I am in charge of a section and have to see that they get their meals and be responsible for those men in their work. Winter I dread and now what it means is longer hours on duty for while it is dark everyone must be on  –  and bitter cold days, but still it's in all parts – this [is] great work and we must not grumble. Thank God it is not in our own country.

"Well Maggie I could write you a volume but you can guess there is very little time to spare for oneself in the trenches so you must forgive me for not writing more at present. I am pleased that you are all well and hope you will continue to enjoy good health. As for myself I am very well apart for a cold but that will soon [blow] itself away. Before closing many thanks once more to you all for the tuck-box."

Fred was killed at Vimy Ridge in May 1916, aged 25

Copyright © 2015 Jacqueline Wadsworth / Adrian Lea

The Great War in Europe that nobody was expecting!

Irish home-rule poster

When the first rumblings of war were heard in Europe during the summer of 1914, it took most ordinary British people by surprise. Most assumed that, if there was to be any trouble at all, it would be Ireland where the demand for home-rule had been causing mounting tension.

This was certainly the opinion of Maude Boucher, a mother of four from Bristol, when news of war came through after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinant in Serbia. In a journal she kept throughout the Great War, the following entry reveals how she - and many others like her - were taken completely by surprise:

“The summer term was just completed and the holidays commencing, when on Tuesday, July 28 1914, the evening newspaper boys were shouting in the streets ‘War declared’. We had all been wondering and speculating as to whether there would be war in Ireland or not, as there has been much quarrelling and many disturbances there in connection with the Home Rule Question, so naturally one jumped to the conclusion that it had been decided at last to have war, but much to our surprise, we found that it was not in connection with Ireland  at all, but it was a little war between Austria and Servia [sic] which seemed, at the time, as though it would not affect us in any way.

“Mabel called to see us and told us what a shock it had given her when she heard the newsboys calling out ‘War Declared’ as she quite thought then that we were to have a Civil War in Ireland. She said ‘I was so relieved to find that it was only a little war between Austria and Servia ... We none of us then knew or imagined what this little war was going to lead to.”

When Britain declared war on Germany a few weeks later, most Irish people backed the governement regardless of political affiliation, and the Irish 'troubles' died down for a while. But violence flared up unexpectedly in 1916 when republicans mounted an armed insurrection during Easter Week which lasted six days and became known as the Easter Rising.

Executed: Irish republican
Joseph Plunkett

The British Army used its vastly superior numbers and artillery to suppress the rising quickly and the ringleaders were rounded up, court-martialled and executed. Among them was Joseph Plunkett who came from a family of republicans. His brothers George and Jack were also sentenced to be shot, but both had their sentences commuted to ten years' penal servitude. They spent six months in the formidable Portland Prison, in Dorset, and their arrival on the island was witnessed by nine-year-old Mary Bool, whose recollections later in life are among many fascinating WW1 memories held by Portland Heritage Trust:

“One day I was down the yard and was watching prisoners being unloaded. One of them was a member of the Plunkett family, a leader of the rebellion. They were difficult prisoners and the guards had quite a lot of trouble with them. When they were coming off the ship’s cutters and whalers and up onto Camber Pier, one of them got up on one of the bollards and sang 'Danny Boy' and there was loud cheering and hurrah-ing and all sorts. 

“They were marched away up to the prison, and all night long they would be calling out from their cells to one another and keeping people awake singing Irish songs. Our home was about half a mile from the prison but, if the wind was in the south-east, we could hear them plainly. One of them, maybe the one who stood on the bollard in the dockyard had a very good voice, a tenor.”

Mary Bool's recollections - and those of other children who grew up on Portland during the First World War - appear in my new book, Weymouth, Dorchester and Portland in the Great War, which is out in October 2015. You can read more from Maude Boucher's WW1 journal in my books Letters from the Trenches and Bristol in the Great War.

The formidable Portland Prison: 'All night long prisoners would be calling out from their cells'

A heartwarming welcome for the boys far from home

A cheering feature of the First World War - although not one generally remembered today - were the friendships struck up between soldiers and the families in whose homes they were billeted while training for the Front. Many volunteer soldiers were sent to distant parts of the country to prepare for the fighting and it was often a great comfort to stay with families like their own, especially for those had never been away from home.

In some cases, soldiers were even treated like sons - perhaps by couples who had already lost their own - and when the day came to say goodbye, plenty of tears were shed. Many kept in touch by letter, like this soldier who was billeted with a Mr and Mrs Otter on the Isle of Portland in Dorset. SJ James wrote to them from Gallipoli at the end of 1915, where the weather was turning nasty and the Allies were facing defeat. Sadly, one of the other men who had been billeted with him had already been killed:

The letter written by SJ James to his Portland hosts

 'Just a line to wish you all a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year. We shall be up in the trenches on Xmas day but we hope to have as good a time as possible under the present circumstances on New Year’s Day when we shall be in our rest camp. I am in pretty good health just now and hope you are all in the best of health too … I wish we were all there at Portland again having a good time billeted with you, but alas that will never be for poor Fred has gone under ... It is bitterly cold out here now and of course it will be worse when our winter really starts in January. There are very few of our old hands left now, and only one I can really call a chum. Again wishing you all the compliments of the season.’

I discovered this letter at Weymouth Museum while researching my new book Weymouth, Dorset and Portland in the Great War (out in October). Interestingly, I also discovered that not everyone on Portland had such fond memories of the visiting troops. Ethel Braund was seven when war broke out, and her recollections of the Great War are held by Portland Heritage Trust:

‘Ours was one of the few houses that had a bathroom and they wanted mother to take an officer. She said she couldn’t undertake to look after an officer, she didn’t realize he’d have his own servant to look after him and she thought she would have to look after him. She’d got a big family of small children at the time so they, very meanly, billeted the three roughest men in the lot – and they were a rough lot – on her. I remember them; I remember them, they were terrible.’

At around the same time in Northamptonshire, a Mrs Searle had obviously grown very fond of Private Tom Fake, when he was billeted with her at the end of 1916 before being sent to France. Once he'd departed, however, she was unable to write to him because censorship prevented him disclosing his address, so she wrote instead to his wife in Bristol:

Private Tom Fake,
like a son to Mrs Searle

Dear Mrs Fake, 

Mr Searle and I were more than please to receive the photo also letter from you ... I am glad Tom is alright I had a field card from him, dated 15th Dec. but of course no address so I really could not write to him but shall do now at my first opportunity. I feel awfully grieved for you but I hope you will keep bright for your dear little boy's sake [the Fakes had a young son] and I hope and trust that Tom will be spared so that you will be able to live that happy and contented life once again. I remain yours very sincerely, Mrs A Searle 

PS I shall be happy to hear from you again when you can spare the time

Tom Fake survived the war and more of his story and letters can be read in my books Bristol in the Great War and Letters from the Trenches. Sadly, I wasn't able to find out anything else about SJ James, except that he served with the Royal Naval Division. If anyone reading this can shed light on him, I'd love to hear from you.

Copyright © 2015 Jacqueline Wadsworth / Weymouth Museum / Portland Heritage Trust / JackieCarpenter

'We've come to deliver the knockout blow to Fritz!'

We're in it together: American and British servicemen share a
muddy moment at Yate air base in 1919 (Yate Heritage Centre) 

When American GIs were stationed in Britain during the Second World War, their 'un-English' ways put a lot of noses out of joint. 'Overpaid, oversexed and over here!' was a complaint muttered fairly often by locals who were unaccustomed to what they considered brash behaviour.

Similar feelings may have been aroused during the First World War, too, when American servicemen began arriving in Britain on their way to the Front, for accounts written at the time reveal that the Americans announced themselves as a fairly ebullient bunch. Among them was Corporal Ned Steel of Kansas City, who spent two months at the Third Western Aero Repair Depot at Yate, north of Bristol, in 1918.

'Twas the afternoon of April 20th when we arrived there, the first American soldiers to set foot in these parts, and we created no small commotion...Wherever we went in the next two months of our visit, the hospitality was unabounded. Talk about appreciation! Those Englishmen saw in us the reserve strength of the Allies come to deliver the knockout blow to Fritz.'

The ocean liner Aquitania, which served as a troopship in WW1

Steel belonged to a squadron of airmen that had crossed the Atlantic aboard the Aquitania, formerly a Cunard ocean-liner which served as a troop-carrier and hospital ship during the conflict. Its sister ship, the Lusitania, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in 1915 with the loss of many American civilian lives. This catastrophe was one of the reasons that prompted the US to enter the war in 1917.

During the crossing, Steel and his friends had been amused at the differences between themselves and the British. They gently mocked the way everything the Brits said was littered with mild curses. Even when the Aquitania's history was being explained, wrote Steel, every other word seemed to be 'bloody': 'The ship had been in the hospital service between the bloody Dardanelles and England. This was her first bloody voyage as a bloody troop ship.' The Americans also smiled at the British penchant for keeping meals simple, with Steel mimicking: 'My Gosh! Fish for breakfast?'

But the ribbing stopped when the Americans stepped ashore, to be greeted by warm and enthusiastic crowds. Perhaps for the first time, they began to understand the high price the British had already paid for the war:

'April 11, 1918 we awoke at the wharves of Liverpool. Then began our welcome in England. Ferries plying the muddy Mersey were lined with people waving handkerchiefs at us. And when we had landed a little later and were marching to our train through the uptown district of Liverpool great crowds along the way watched us. Crowds, mostly of women, they were - and rosy-cheeked girls. Young men were conspicuous by their scarcity, in fact were almost a minus quantity. It came to us forcibly then that England was doing her utmost in manpower, and some of our prejudice vanished.'

Steel appears to have been charmed by his rail journey south to Bristol:

'With a squad to each compartment on our funny looking coaches we started across "Merry Old England". The dinky little engine quite surprised us with its speed. What a beautiful country it was...green green grass covering every inch of untilled ground...stone walls...everything clean and tidy...for once the Californians were mum.'

He noted how few level crossings there were, with the train more often going over bridges or under roads: 'Only once in England did we see a wagon road intersect the railroad's right of way and then strong gates of iron shut out the traffic and the watchman tended them as the train went by.' At Bristol the men changed trains for Yate ('a town with one street').

Men of the American Air Service form a 'propellor' at
Yate air base in August 1918 (Yate Heritage Centre)

Steel's description of his time in Blighty is in a book he wrote about the history of his unit, the 822nd (Repair) Squadron, a copy of which is held at Yate Heritage Centre. I discovered it while researching my own book Bristol in the the Great War, in which I included an entertaining account of the Bristol girls he met. In comparison with the ladies he had left behind they were much more forward, welcoming Steel and his friends with open arms, offering to buy them drinks, scrounging cigarettes and even asking for a goodnight kiss !

In the workplace, Steel observed the different manner in which the two nationalities set about their jobs: 'The common impression among us in regard to Tommy was that he was slow but thorough. "Swinging the lead" (taking it easy) was quite universal in the [work]shops when the flight sergeants and officers weren't around. When it came to turning out first class products, however, Tommy was there'.

Meanwhile: 'Tommy was penning his impressions of us: how Sam carried himself as tho' he owned the world, was free-and-easy and took no rough talk from his non-coms [non-commissioned officers].'

Steel concluded: 'When the history of this war is written, let it be remembered that the American Aviaition Squadrons stationed in England did their bit by strengthening the hearts and wills of their English cousins at an hour when the war looked darkest to them.'

Confident words indeed, but after a few weeks in France things would often look rather different to the fresh young men who arrived from America with bags of enthusiasm but little experience of trench warfare. Such a caution were sent home by George Swales, one of the first American soldiers to arrive in France whose his story is told in my book Letters from the Trenches. In a letter to his wife he wrote:

‘I hope the Yanks don’t think they are going to have a walkover for they are in for a surprise. I thought I had a pretty fair idea of what it was and I expected it to be rough but it’s worse than what Sherman [an American general] said war was. It will take some of the swank out of them before they are two weeks in the trenches.’

The dreaded knock at the door that signalled bad news

Vera Brittain

The terrible moment when families received bad news from the Front has often been written about and is one of the abiding images of the First World War. Vera Brittain's account of the day she learnt her brother was dead is particularly chilling: ‘There came the sudden loud clattering at the front-door knocker that always meant a telegram. For a moment I thought that my legs would not carry me, but they behaved quite normally as I got up and went to the door. I knew what was in the telegram.’

Whether it was a telegram (usually reserved for officers) or a letter, the bald facts could not be softened: a loved one had been killed far from home and life would never be the same again. It was a natural reaction to try and find out more about the circumstances of death, how exactly a father, husband, brother or friend had died, and many wrote back asking for more details.

Far from home: graves at the battlefront

Painful as they are, the replies were often kept by families and some can be read in my book Letters from the Trenches. Below is one written to the sister of Second Corporal Rockett, who was killed on the battlefield in the spring of 1918. It was written by an army captain whose tone is weary, his letter almost formulaic: first the facts, then an offer of further help, followed by an expression of sympathy and praise for the soldier's heroism.

16^th April 1918

"Dear Miss Rockett,

I duly received your letter of 11^th inst addressed to the chaplain.  As there is at present no chaplain for this company I am giving you a short account of what happened to your brother 2^nd Cpl Rockett. From the accounts of various men who were present at the time, your brother was shot through the head with a bullet. He was in the act of bandaging a wounded man at the time and his death appears to have been instantaneous. As our men were forced to retire from their position at that time, your brother’s body had to be left behind.

If there are any further particulars you would like I shall do my best to obtain them for you.

I should like to take this opportunity of expressing to you and your relations my deepest sympathy with you all in your great loss.

I myself had formed the very highest opinion of your brother and when I heard the sad news of his death I was more than sorry.

I trust that it may be some small satisfaction and consolation to you at this time of sorrow to know the heroic manner in which your brother met his death and also to know that he was very highly thought of by all the officers and men of the company. He was so thoroughly reliable and willing at all times, that his death is a great loss to the company.

Once again I would assure you of my heartfelt sympathy at this time."

An ambulance at the Front desperately tries
to reach the dead and wounded

There is no reason to believe that this isn't an accurate account of what happened to Second Corporal Rockett. But history suggests that families were often given a sanitised version of the truth, without the gruesome details of a death that may have been far from heroic. Not only was this kinder for all concerned, it was also vital if support for the war at home was to be maintained.

Such 'glossing-over' was the subject of one of Siegried Sasson's most disturbing - and heartbreaking -
poems...

The Hero

Jack fell as he'd have wishes,' the Mother said,

And folded up the letter that she'd read. 

'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke

In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.

She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud

Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.

He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies

That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.

For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes

Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,

Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,

Had panicked down the trench that night the mine

Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried 

To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,

Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care

Except that lonely woman with white hair.

In the chaos of war, who could know where the truth lay?

Copyright © 2015 Jacqueline Wadsworth