‘Today is Sunday,’ wrote Sherriff to Pips. ‘We had church service this morning in the building in which I saw a Charlie Chaplin film yesterday – about a mile from the firing line with a shell hole in the roof patched with black canvas, and all the while we were watching the show the guns were going it hard not far away; they had on an Edison picture – “A Day That Is Dead” illustrating a Tennyson poem – also a Bronco Billy picture and a Charlie Chaplin one. [They] played to a very appreciative audience of whom many had probably been doing duty in the trenches that afternoon. The Church Service was also accompanied by the guns – the service is voluntary and a great part of the Battalion attends notwithstanding’.

Officers of the 9th East Surreys, March 1917. Including: seated, Lt Warre-Dymond (extreme left), Capt Tetley (extreme right), Lt Clark (2nd right). First row, standing: 2nd Lt Sherriff (centre), 2nd Lt Lindsay (extreme right). Second row, standing: 2nd Lt Douglass (extreme left). By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: ESR/25/Clark/7)

He told Pips that the officers of the Battalion had had their photos taken in a group that day, and that he would send copies home as soon as he could. It was the first photo that had been taken of him in France.

[Note that the photograph includes some of the men who may have been, in part, the models for the characters in Journey’s End, including Warre-Dymond and Tetley (both of whom may be reflected in Stanhope); Clark (Trotter, to a limited degree); and Douglass (Uncle). The photo also shows Sherriff’s good friend Harry Lindsay, who took part in the trench raid on which the Journey’s End raid may be based.]

Before finishing his letter he told his father about the excitement of watching ‘air fighting’ (‘one of the most spectacular sights to be seen’) although the combat was not so much between the aircraft as it was with shelling from the ground:

‘I have known days when you could hardly ever look into the air without seeing somewhere the little black puffs of smoke showing where a shell has burst. I have not often seen it, but occasionally one of them coming down in a little ball of flame, or long trails of black smoke, is rather impressive, but the most striking fact is the absolute supremacy that we have over the enemy – you see literally clouds of our machines.’

[Next letters: 18 March]