1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [343]
(a) (i) What exactly were the orders issued by Lord Cavan?
(a) (ii) How were they made known to the Brigades?
(b) (i) What exactly were the orders issued by the Brigadiers of the 2nd and 3rd Guards Brigades?
(b) (ii) How were they made known to the Battalions?
(c) (i) What exactly were the orders issued by the Officers Commanding 1st Scots Guards, 2nd Scots Guards, and 1st Coldstream Guards?
(c) (ii) How were they made known to the Companies and by them to the men?
2. As the orders appear to have been verbal, some corroboration of the orders is desirable.
3. It is not necessary to hold a Court of Inquiry, but merely to obtain statements from officers who can throw light on these points.
4. The matter is urgent.
Headquarters,
First Army.
(Signed) A. M. Henderson Scoles.
Captain.
D.A.A.G., 1st Army.
The Christmas truce initiated by the Guards was hushed up. No reports of it appeared in the newspapers and they would hardly have been appreciated in the present mood. The comical Germans of the year before were now the hated Boche, progenitors of all the horrors and misery that had dashed the hopes and expectations of a long and harrowing year.
It was the pantomime season again and, like last year, the traditional fairy-tales, the corny jokes and japes, had a topical wartime slant. At Christmas 1914 the crowds had left the theatres happily humming ‘Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts for Soldiers…’
Sister Susie’s sewing shirts for soldiers
Such skill at sewing shirts our shy young sister Susie shows
Some soldiers send epistles,
say they’d rather sleep on thistles
Than the saucy, soft, short shirts for soldiers sister Susie sews.
They were already familiar with the words, for they had appeared on a screen lowered from the flies and the pantomime dame had led a dozen jolly choruses in traditional style, dividing the theatre into sections, setting stalls against circle, pit against gallery, ladies against gentlemen, children against adults, and urging each to outdo another, first in volume then in speed. It was great fun, children took special delight in mastering the tongue-twister, and long after the pantomimes ended the sale of sheet music and gramophone records was still earning a fortune for the publishers and the composer.
This Christmas, the pantomime song of the year did not lend itself to jolly entertainment – but it struck home and went straight to the heart:
Keep the Home Fires burning
While your hearts are yearning,
Though your lads are far away
They dream of Home
There’s a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining
Turn the dark clouds inside out
Till the Boys come Home.
It reflected the sombre undercurrent beneath the determined gaiety of the second Christmas of the war. Last year there had been hope – and there still was, but it was no longer the hope of innocent optimism. If the agony of loss and the pain of disappointment had caused iron to enter the soul of the nation they had also put steel into its backbone. No one doubted that the war would be won. But no one now doubted that it would be a long hard haul – that it was up to the Boys – and that it might be a long, long time before they did come home.
Marching to Newtonards station, 2 July 1915, 13th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles en route to France
On 18 June, Waterloo Day, Sir Evelyn Wood VC inspected the Inns of Court Battalion on Kitchener’s Field at Berkhamsted to mark the fact that 2,000 of its members had been commissioned since the outbreak of war (Imperial War Museum)
The 7th Battalion Royal Scots at their last pre-war camp – many were to lose their lives in the troop train disaster of May 1915
The 6th South Staffordshires solved the bath shortage by lining a farm cart with a tarpaulin and filling it with water from the farmyard pump (Imperial War Museum)
‘Training, training, training, always bally-well training…’ Kitchener’s army were of the opinion that they had dug more trenches at home than there were in France. The hill behind the bridge is covered in them (Imperial