The battalion left the front line the evening before, and Sherriff breathed a sigh of relief to be back in the support trenches: ‘We have now come back to have a rest for some days behind the line, so I shall be able to give you a few longer letters,’ he wrote to Pips. He apologised that there were some questions his father had posed in an earlier letter that he could not answer (since ‘they all deal rather closely with military matters’), but he could at least confirm that the Xmas pudding had arrived on time, and that Christmas was much happier than he had expected, since he had been able to spend it in his old dugout.
From Memories of Active Service, Vol I, facing page 173 (By permission of the Surrey History Centre, Ref: 2332/3/9/3/2)
He went on to explain that he had been very busy since returning to the battalion (so suddenly that there had been ‘no time for regrets’). His first two days had been spent in rest ‘cleaning up and going through the property in my valise and getting ready my stuff for going into the line’. Once they had moved up he found that the two months he had spent away had left him rather stale, but he ‘soon got into the way of things’. He found the time off duty passed ‘pleasantly’, and even on duty they had a fairly quiet time apart from the one day [New Year’s Day] when they ‘had a bad “strafing”‘.
‘You may wonder what I mean by a “strafe” – it is when Fritz gets nasty and bombards us with various missiles which go by the various and peculiar names as Whizzbangs, Minnies, Pipsqueaks, Darts etc. I may give you some idea of what it is like without giving away any information. If you are not on duty your first warning is a bump! bump! bump! up above somewhere. Ordinarily you take no notice of this, but should it become heavy your duty is to be with your men to give them confidence – this you do, and floundering along trenches full of mud with things bursting all about and little bits flying about and your feet sticking tight in the mud, things are not pleasing – but it is so unpleasant that you can’t think of anything but to get about as quickly as possible, for your job on such occasions is to see that all men have as much cover as possible…’
He also answered another question for his father: ‘You ask how near shells come to you sometimes – well, in our last “strafe”, 10 yards is about as near as you want them – that is, of course, when you are in a trench and the shell bursts over the parapet – in which case if you duck you are quite safe – yes, a bombardment from a distance is a wonderful sight which is impossible to describe’.
He went on to comment on how wonderfully the British seemed to have the upper hand in the air – ‘on a good day for flying it is nothing to see 20 or 30 aeroplanes cruising round – all ours, and only rarely do you see a German flying miles high and always being tremendously shelled.’ He looked forward to reading the Times History of the War when it was all over – it would be a good addition to his library, he felt – but ‘I will devote my first studies to earlier history’.
[Next letters: 8 January]