Writing to Pips, Sherriff sounded cheery – unsurprisingly,  given that the battalion was moving out of the front line and into Brigade support: ‘We are now well in it again, at quite a new place, so I am seeing the sights of France fairly well up to now’.

He was, of course, in Hooge, near Ypres, but could not tell his father, for fear of the censors. But he sought to describe his surroundings in at least some detail:

‘There is some indescribable feeling of curiosity and a certain amount of  dread in reaching a place which for 2 years or more has been in every paper and everyone’s mouth – to reach desolate, smashed-up  pieces of ground and battered skeleton farms which one day I expect will be as famous as Blenheim and the like – you marvel how man can possibly live on such ground which, again and again, is churned up by shells of all kind – but they do – and quite cheerfully too. Nothing in the world can quench men’s natural tendency to cheerfulness in unpleasant situations just as nothing will ever make him happy in absolutely pleasant situations.’

Postcards bought by Sherriff’s father while on their battlefield tour in 1921. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/9/7)

Being in support offered more time for reading, and he had been making more progress with Mr Britling: ‘It is rather a remarkable book in some ways and has evidently become popular – when talking of how the sons play with tin soldiers…it reminds me very much of our soldier games which I only hope we may be able to continue after the war.’ In fact, he hoped that, after the war, he would be able to continue all of his games and hobbies (which had ‘become much dearer and pleasanter’ to him since he he’d been away) – including cricket and hockey, stamp and coin collecting, and ‘the reading of history’. He was looking forward to seeing how Pips had done up his study.

There were now, he reckoned, just about 7 officers ahead of him, waiting for leave – and if he was lucky enough to survive the next 6 weeks he might get the leave that he had long been waiting for. In the meantime, he would stay in his little dugout, cut into the side of a trench, which was ‘just large enough to lay down in…although I feel rather like Alice in the Rabbit’s house, as there is only room just to sit up.’

[Next letter: 21 May]