Sherriff wrote to Pips telling him that he thought it would be interesting, after the war, to return to France:

‘…to spend a few days over here visiting the old spots which were once our barriers to the land further on – to look into which, through a periscope, was to look like Alice did into the Looking Glass [an analogy he had used a few months earlier] – till one daytime glass melted and through they went and found the people there curiously the same as the ones here.’ [He and his father did go on a battlefield tour in 1921, which Herbert wrote up in a journal, and which Sherriff wrote about in an article in the school magazine.]

Sherriff’s father Herbert, on their Battlefield Tour in 1921. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/9/7)

The weather was still very fine, making things easier for the British advance, which he hoped would hasten the end of the war. But he spared a thought for the Germans too: ‘What the Germans must feel like I cannot imagine – but it must be a queer feeling, for day after day the guns roar away without stopping – one continual roar which means unlimited ammunition and guns.’

He was ‘orderly officer’ today, and was writing while waiting for the moment when he would have to turn out the guard to make sure everything was in order. The following day they would all be heading off on another march, which would take them ‘a long way away from our usual haunts, which means a change of scenery’. He apologised that he could not say exactly where, but he hoped that he would be able to – someday soon.

[Next letter: 26 April]