1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [320]
I got all my information about the Battle of Loos from our boys after it was all over. I joined the survivors of the 7th Battalion Cameron Highlanders immediately after Loos. Soon after I got there, the next day I think, there was a mail came in. All the boys in my company were crowded round to see what there was for them and the Post Corporal was calling out the names and dishing out the letters and parcels. Half the names that were called out there was nobody to answer them. Then a voice would call out, ‘Ower the hill.’ Then one or two more, then another name – and there would be silence, then his chum would call out, ‘Ower the hill.’ That was all you could hear: ‘Ower the hill. Ower the hill. Ower the hill.’ If it was parcels they dished them out anyway and we new arrivals got a share of the parcels that were meant for the boys who’d got killed.
Letters for men who were wounded were returned to the base and reached them, sooner or later, in hospital. Parcels were shared out among their comrades. Letters addressed to the men who had gone were stamped ‘Killed’ and returned to the senders. Sometimes, though seldom, such letters arrived at a soldier’s home address before the official telegram informing his next of kin that he was dead.
Orderly room clerks as well as Post Corporals were kept busy, for a great tide of paper flowed out from every battalion in the days after the battle. The soldiers were all writing letters to worried families and sweethearts. ‘Dear Mum and Dad… Dear Ethel… Dear Sarah… Dear Aunt May…’, and, however bald and uninformative, they brought welcome reassurance to anxious friends at home. ‘We’ve been in a big fight, but I’ve come through… I am in the pink and hope you are the same. Hope this finds you as it leaves me.’ There were no words to express what they had experienced, no way of telling the relief of being alive. Some day they might have a tale to tell. Not now.
Officers were dutifully applying themselves to the depressing task of writing to relatives of the men who had been killed. As the newly appointed Battalion Commander, David Pole was swamped with paperwork, but he had led C Company into the battle, and he felt that, like any Company Commander, he had a personal obligation to write to the families of the men who had not come back. A personal letter might ease the pain of the terse official telegram. ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Craven, It is my painful duty to tell you that your son, Sergeant Craven…’ It was indeed a painful duty. Later it would become routine. But there was one special letter that took priority: ‘Dear Mrs Warwick, You asked me to write if any mishap befell your husband and I must first hasten to assure you that, although the Colonel was wounded in our recent attack, I have every reason to believe that he is going on well and that you may confidently expect to have him home soon…’ It was 29 September. As Pole wrote the date at the top of his letter he must surely have been struck by the fact that it was just three weeks to the day since the Battalion had landed in France.
Every surviving officer was writing difficult letters, but there were other matters to be attended to and some were pleasanter tasks for they were instructed to send in recommendations for gallantry awards. It was Arthur Agius’s impression that every one of his men had earned a reward but, since the authorities were unlikely to share this view and the allocation of medals would be limited, he confined himself to the most deserving.
No. 1783 Private BUTE, WILFRED
No. 1919 Private PEPPER, JOSEPH WILLIAM
(Stretcher-Bearer)
On the early morning of Sept. 25th when an enemy minenwerfer bomb exploded a battery of gas cylinders in the DUCKS BILL, these two men assisted to evacuate the casualties which were numerous and to clear the gas in the trench.
The difficulties and danger of this operation were accentuated by the fact that it was still dark, the trench was full of escaped