He wrote home to both his parents today, letting them know that he had now started his first tour of duty in the front line. He told his mother that they had arrived the previous morning (Tuesday), and that he had been detailed to bring up the last platoon with their cookers – not an easy job since the cookers were bulky and filled with wood,, and not easy to carry along narrow trenches. He was unhappy that his Company had been landed with a rather bad piece of trench, perhaps because their Captain was the senior of the Company Commanders. Here is his sketch, showing how close they were to the Germans – especially in the sap at one end, and the crater posts at the other.
Sherriff’s sketch of the trenches on Vimy Ridge (Memories of Active Service, Vol 1, facing p99; by permission of the Surrey History Centre)
He was writing at 3:00pm, having just finished a 2 3/4 hour duty, when ‘everything was rather quiet, after a noisy morning’. He explained to his parents the duties he would have: roughly 2 hours by day, 3 hours by night, and two additional hours at ‘Stand-to’, [which took place twice a day, roughly at dawn and dusk, when every man in the battalion would take his place in the trench for an hour, in case of attack: the Germans did the same, so for two hours every day there were two lines of men, stretching from the Channel to the Alps, gazing across No Man’s Land at each other.]
He found the duty arduous, watching, as he did, for the appearance of Minnies, which the Germans sent over regularly, causing damage to the British lines, and meaning ‘constant working parties, busy all day.’ But he tried to be stoic about it: ‘it is very hard to get used to these things, but the time has got to pass.’ And besides, he now, at last, had the comfort of letters from home (some of which had previously gone astray), and a ‘good, deep, dugout’ in which to read them. He also had Marcus Aurelius and Old Mortality to cheer him up, so he was not yet hopelessly fed-up. In fact, as hen told his father, he didn’t think he would reach that stage anywhere, as ‘I possess a certain amount of Philosophy which I can always apply when necessary.’
He was still looking forward to the end of his 8 day stretch, and to returning to that village behind the lines where he could once again ‘walk along an open road, and across open fields.’ In the meantime, he would content himself with looking up at the same moon and stars as his father would see when taking his own walks in Bushy Park: ‘it’s strange, isn’t it – but there is something friendly even about that thought.’
[Next letters: 12 October]