Sherriff’s letter home today was brief – partly because, as he told his mother, ‘I am having such a nice quiet time here that I nearly failed with my letter…and I have left it late…’

He had been enjoying watching the skating, which had been interesting because ‘all kinds and conditions of people indulge in it – officers (French, English and Portuguese), French women, English and French soldiers and all sorts of civilians – they all get on well together’.

He was feeling ‘very much better for my rest’, but knew that it was now drawing near the end. He had been to the dentist three times, and had three teeth ‘stopped’, and the rest passed as ‘sound’. He felt the dentist had done them ‘quite well’, but that he ‘lacked the delicacy of Dr Wallace.’ His cut hand [incurred in a fall while in the Rest Home] was healing up as well.

And there, with an apology that he could not think of anything else to say, his letter ended.

[Next letter: 7 February]

‘I have still a few days of rest left and I am enjoying them quite well,’ he wrote to Pips, ‘walking every day several miles in various directions…’. The canal was still thick with ice, and the weather was intensely cold, ‘although you feel it very little as there is no wind’. In fact, he had been for a walk with an officer from the Army Service Corps, and ‘after having a few slides on the ice we walked back without overcoats as we were much too warm.’ While walking by the canal they had watched a man trying to cut his barge out of the ice with an axe (‘but after three chops he fell down and gave up the effort as a bad job’). They had also come across a group of people, a couple of them armed with shotguns, apparently hunting for squirrels in the hedgerows, but since they were very excitable with their guns the pair had quickly walked on.

The previous day he had been to a service at the local cathedral – the first Catholic service he had ever attended. He gave his father a detailed description of the whole service, which began with an old man lighting candles round the altar (very slowly), followed by much muttering and ‘people coming in and out just as they please’. Just as they were thinking of going a priest came round from behind a screen along with ‘an elderly person with a cocked hat decorated with red ribbon, a sword girt to his side and a spear – a kind of beadle…I suppose, and quite out of place in such solemn surroundings.’

Extract from letter to Pips, 2 February 1917. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/1/1/3/9]

Sherriff had obviously not enjoyed the service, for he proceeded to let rip in his letter in an uncharacteristically bad-tempered tirade:

‘I don’t think you will think what I have said sacrilegious,’ he wrote, ‘but it is all really too absurd for such present days – the root of the religion, of course, is sound – but the absurd ceremonies and tawdry, trumpery decorations, all obviously intended to impress people and an insult to their intelligence at that – what a pity that such a fine sound doctrine should be utterly spoilt, almost ruined by the pantomimic way it is conducted – it is almost an insult to the magnificent building in which it is conducted. If a religious service can be held in a broken down shell battered schoolroom as we have it – where the chaplain gives a plain sensible sermon and a few hymns are sung, I cannot see why people should worship under the same doctrine amongst gaudy trappings…I cannot see why vast quantities of candles should be lit and that each person should have two chairs, one to kneel on and one to sit on, and why a man with a cocked hat with red ribbons on it, and a sword and spear should be necessary…but I suppose cleverer men than us are responsible for the service being carried out so as to be unintelligible to everybody, so we must not complain…….”

[Perhaps the bad temper was just an indication of the fact that he was not yet fully recovered from his neuralgia and headaches, and was stressing over whether and when he should speak to the doctor.]

[Next letter: 6 February]

‘I made a visit to the dentist yesterday,’ wrote Sherriff to his mother, ‘and I now know the value of Dr Wallace, for this one simply goes at it hammer and tongs, not minding what he grinds – but I suppose it is better than having no dentist at all.’

Sherriff’s sister, Beryl, in nurses uniform (around 1918). (By permission of the Surrey History Centre, Ref: 3813/14/1/4)

The weather was still cold, the frost as hard as ever, and all the local waterways were frozen to at least six inches, he reckoned. Skating was ‘in full swing’ he wrote, and he had watched it on several occasions, admiring the English officers and French people who were able to skate well. He had been for a walk the day before with two others, and had tried to get ‘all thought of the war out of my mind’, but he was finding it impossible. And it was a difficult subject to broach with the doctor:

‘you feel so guilty and it looks just as though you are simply frightened to go up the line – and what cure can there possibly be for that? I keep putting off the time of talking to him, but it must be soon – I feel I would be willing to do anything – resign my commission and work at any kind of work so long as I am only away from the awful crash of explosions which sometimes quite numb me…’

At that point he quickly apologised to his mother that he was about to cut her letter short, for he had completely forgotten his sister Beryl’s birthday the day before, and he had to write to her straightaway.

[Next letter: 2 February]