1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [230]
Dear Mother, we had our photographs taken yesterday and if you should see it in the illustrated papers I am just behind the Marquis of Winchester.†
Mother dear, I know at times you must feel sad, but I know you will keep a cheerful appearance for my sake. It does not seem that we are going out, somehow we cannot realise what lays before us, the hardships and dangers of real warfare. Mother dear, I ask of you that you will say a prayer beside your bed (every night) for me, asking God to protect me through all the dangers I have to traverse. As you say, Mother, you will leave me in the hands of God, which is a kind thought from you for me. Take care of everything of mine at home as I prize everything I possess.
Dear Mother, I am glad to hear you are going to Liverpool for a change, but I am so sorry to tell you, owing to the rotters not paying us the billeting money, I shall be unable to send you anything as they are going to credit it to us in our pay books. I think the reason is because of the men getting too much drink and kicking up a row before we go. They owe me £2.
Frank’s division is following us out in about a week’s time. Tell him, dear Mother, I am gone.
Well, dear Mother and Father, I think I have told you all and I will write as soon as we land. Kiss all the children for me and Goodbye to Jack and all friends at home and look for the time when I, Frank and all are reunited again after this war.
Goodbye to all. With fondest love and my first thoughts for you, from your ever loving son,
Joe (of the Rifle Brigade).*
Gnr. D. A. Pankhurst, Stokes Mortar Bty., RFA.
We were given twenty-four hours’ leave and I went home. Father left for work very early in the morning and he came into me before he went and woke me and said (these are his exact words. I shall never forget them), he said, ‘I know you’ll do your duty, but don’t forget, Mother will be worrying about you.’ Those words went with me through the whole of the war. ‘I know you’ll do your duty’ – so I had to do that if only for him. And my mother.
The first two hundred thousand were ready to go to war. The problem that faced the Government was where to employ them to the best advantage – whether to send large reinforcements to the Dardanelles in the hope of tipping the scales and ensuring success, or to concentrate resources on the western front in the hope of eventually breaking through the German line. The long-postponed decision had at last been taken – but it was still in the nature of a compromise. Three New Army Divisions would be sent to the Dardanelles, with more to follow if necessary. The political crisis had caused four weeks’ delay and the first of the three embarked in mid-June, the third on 7 July. The voyage was long, the temperature on the peninsula was rising, the new troops could not possibly take the offensive before August and by then the blistering heat would have reached its peak.
In the early evening of 5 July a special train left Victoria Station carrying the Prime Minister, with Lord Kitchener and other members of his Cabinet, to Dover en route to Calais for a meeting with their French counterparts. Sir John French travelled from his GHQ at St Omer to join them. It was not an entirely satisfactory conference, for the proceedings were in French, a language in which not all the British delegation were fluent, but they believed that certain agreements had been reached. The Dardanelles campaign would be continued and, in the near future, there would be no large offensives on the western front, although ‘local attacks’ would be carried out vigorously, as the British understood it, to harass the line – but not to break it. In view of their still-meagre stocks of rifles and ammunition and the amount required merely to hold the line, they calculated that no all-out offensive would be possible within a year. Lord Kitchener had forecast that by the spring of 1916, he would be able to have seventy divisions in the field – although in the opinion of Lloyd George this optimistic estimate showed a cavalier disregard for the problems