To his mother Charlotte Capell
Monday, Oct 5 [1915]
[?near Loos]
Dearest Mother:
I am better today - had a decent sleep; this time in a sort of loft, where we are crowded to the last available inch; but it is dry if unholily stuffy. Today we have had a route march, and have also been polishing the chains & hubs of our waggons - the usual sort of nonsense to kill time when we are not actually doing things. - It is a day of heavy showers and pale sunshine between, alas, to think how rarely for how long we shall get even so little sunshine as this.
The post which had been so irregular, has brought me a good bundle of letters now - from you, Isabel and Mary. I want you to send me a small ball of khaki wool and some stuff to patch up the pockets of my tunic - I have various little domestic tasks to perform to clothes. Isabel demands that I shall tell her the offerings most delightful to us stew-satiated ones. I think cake and butter the chief. (We have a weekly issue of about 1 oz of butter and there is a ban on local butter and milk). I had a long letter yesterday from Paul Levy; and Bonavia is one of my most faithful writers.
This is a charming spot in a way, - many trees. Imagine an old-fashioned (17th century) chateau-farm, in a tree hidden dip. Quite charming, if one were the only friend of the lady of the house... but the lady and all others of the house have gone. It is given over to the khaki locusts. The place and spirit recall our first days at St Hilaire last March - the pageantry of war about us in plenty but actual thing well away... Hereabouts the relics of our poor old Division. There is no denying that they did splendidly - performed just what they were planned to perform in the scheme of attack absolutely and completely. Of course they lost. Frank's old lot for instance, had [censored] and you know what had already happened to them at Festubert... There were other fine troops... [censored] ... I could weep still to think of those ... [censored] into that frightful attack. Ours are anyhow better men than the Germans. Of course the millions of shells were wasted, but it was the infantry that pushed the Germans back. The German wire was cut, but - do you know - the German front trenches themselves were hardly at all damaged?
For the first few days we were clearing far more than our quota of the wounded. Later in the week, other field ambulances turned up. I can't give you a clear idea of our position out there; and when I have a chance, shall I remember it? all so extravagant as it was and the details fading already. Our station was not 600 yards away (at the nearest point) from the German trenches, so we were flooded out with wounded almost as soon as the attack began. In the morning I was helping with the dressing, but as the day went on I realised that still more urgently was everyone needed on the actual field, so I joined Chapin and others and went collecting. You can fancy quite well without my dilating on it what was the tragedy, the horror of it all. We plodded on backwards and forwards, in a swamp of mud, rain falling incessantly, (as at Festubert, the gods fought against us with that cursed rain) in a tangle of wire and shell holes, sniped at frequently, and on one journey, coming in for a tempest of fire - shells, machine guns, rifles - not of course that we harmless ones were the provokers, but a mountain battery that was dashing up to the new front. We lay low in the grass with a poor shivering fellow on the stretcher for about half an hour before things calmed. As I have told you before, I am not one of your heroic souls, but at times like that it is in my nature to survey things from a detached point of view, and to be engrossed in the absurdly unreal, romantic spectacle. It was not till early on the Monday morning, when absolutely exhausted, that I "got the wind up" - which is current slang for feeling afraid. That was when we had spent a night in getting the wounded out of cellars in Loos. The big village was an amazing wreck. Three sides of the tall church tower lay in a heap at the foot of the fourth; its plaster walls looked ghastly in the moonlight. The streets were littered with tumbled houses and dead horses and men. In a cellar - it was less a cellar than a coal hole - with perilously steep steps, - we found three cases - one thigh, two head wounds (one unconscious). This meant three journeys to the spot half way back where groups of wounded were being collected by the road. The Germans were shelling the road leading out of the village. I shan't forget getting those fellows out of the cellar. The ghigh-wounded chap, a Dragoon, - 14 stone - managed by an astounding effort of will to hobble up on his own accord, more or less supported by us. The Cameron Highlander, head wound, I carried up on my back. The third poor chap we had, desperately, to drag up, - oh dear, more like a sack than a man - there was nothing else for it.
For a case of pluck I must tell you about a sergeant in the 1st Northants, - a young cheeky boot hand who was picked up one night near Loos and brought in to us with a foot wound not dressed. I started preparing him for dressing, and by lantern light began to cut off one of his boots - a nasty shell wound. As I hacked away he said in an airy way, "I don't know how you are going to do anything with the other". The other "Yes, its only hanging on by the puttee." I hadn't noticed it in the dark. Compound fracture of the other leg against the ankle. "Sweating blood", as they say, I attacked the other boot. He bore it without a groan and like-wise the splinting, when his turn came for the table. To distract him, I talked about Northampton - anything. He said he came from Northampton town and asked me where I lived, "St George's Avenue: - "Oh, that's too swanky for me" he said in such a cocky way that everybody laughed.
Just before we left the place for good, last thing on Friday night we had in a fellow who had been recovered that day from before our new position, after having lain in the open since Sunday morning - a thigh wound. The physical suffering of all this - well it is not safe to think about it. But, my dear, the moral endurance is divine, divine, under the stony skies, one's thoughts go back to the men we left "out" - bad abdominal cases that it was mere waste of priceless time to bring in; and marvels that one can still look upon that day. But here we all are again, - most of us - very much as we were before - and I writing so placidly and literally.
Tell me if you see anything about Chapin in the papers. I sent Mrs Chapin a long account of all the details I had collected yesterday. Our original little party of eight who were together at St Albans are now four.
Goodbye, my dearest, and give news of me to all the good people, (Mrs Steele for instance) whose letters I am too tired to answer. Richard