After 11 days ‘away back behind the guns’ Sherriff told his father (and his mother, in a separate letter) that they were getting ready to leave:
‘All is bustle and confusion again today as we are off from our quiet little village where we have been training men, back to our Regiment again – these good jobs never last long and this one has not lasted the time we expected – still we have to get used to these sudden moves and I suppose it is always the army way’.
They were due to leave at about 2:00 in the afternoon with the prospect of a ‘good tidy march’ – ahead. Luckily the weather was now ‘fine’, despite having been very variable of late.
Sherriff’s father dressed for the City (c 1900 or so). By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 3813/14/1/3)
Sherriff’s father dressed for the City (c 1900 or so). By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 3813/14/1/3)
Before he had joined up Sherriff had been, like his father, a clerk for Sun Insurance in the City in London, so he could sympathise that his father was likely to be ‘pretty well underwater with Renewal notices coming in.’ It was a job Sherriff had hated, and had been glad to leave to join the army (a ‘merciful, heaven-sent release he called it in his 1968 autobiography, No Leading Lady), but nevertheless, he now ‘would willingly work from 6 in the morning to 12 at night to be back at that work – you get quite enough of this in a few months.’
In his letter to his mother, meanwhile, he reminisced about the last day he had spent with his mother ‘wandering round Bushy Park’ – exactly six months before. ‘It does seem a long, long time to wait, and although it does not seem so very long ago ins some ways, it seems years in others – I can still remember so clearly everything we did together during those glorious days – our walks in the park, our talks in the front room over the little gas fire and everything between the time when I came home from Gidea Park that afternoon and sat in the front room until we said goodbye at Charing Cross’. He hoped it would not be too long before they got to see each other again.
Sherriff’s mother, in nurses uniform. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/6/6/3)
He thanked her, as he had on previous occasion, for the letters ‘written in haste on the hospital paper’ – he appreciated how busy she must be, and expected she was now becoming quite a skilled nurse. He told her he was longing for the war to end, so that ‘we can settle down to do all those things we talked of so much – a farm, and our tours we would do – I do hope it will soon all come about’.
[Next letters: 30 March]
[Parts of this post were mistakenly published on 24 March (a confusion caused by the similarity in Sherriff’s writing of the numbers 4 and 7). The post relating to his 24 March letter has been rewritten, while the present post covers his letters to both mother and father on 27 March 1917.]