On Tuesday 24 October Sherriff had set out with fifteen ‘other ranks’ from the battalion, who were being transferred temporarily to the 254th Tunnelling Company of the Royal Engineers. He was pleased to be accompanied on the journey by several other officers who were acting as an advance party to scout out the section of the trench to which the battalion was being sent, in Brigade support. Percy High was there, from ‘D’ Company, and Abrams (who had come across to France with him) from ‘B’. The ‘A’ Company officer was 2nd Lt David Hatten, and Sherriff was delighted to discover that he was another former Kingston Grammar School boy (although about 19 years his senior). Also with them on the journey were 2nd Lt Douglass, from Sherriff’s own ‘C’ Company [who went by the nickname ‘Father’, and, like Percy High,  is another plausible model for the figure of ‘Uncle’ in Journey’s End].

The following morning [25th] he wrote to his father to tell him of their journey: ‘[We] left at 7 o’clock from our rest camp and after steady marching for 4 hours eventually arrived at a town [Mazingarbe, between Lens and Béthune in the Loos sector, although he did not say so] where we were put up in a very comfortable commercial hotel, just like the ones we stay at in cycle touring.’ The town was well preserved (a few miles back from the front line) and he had enjoyed the rest of the day at leisure to explore it. He and Percy High had shared a room in the hotel, but today after lunch they would go their separate ways – Percy to the trenches, he to the mine with his men.

Mazingarbe in 1921. Photo taken by Pips during a cycle tour of the battlefields with his son, and posted into his journal of the trip. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/9/7)

By this time he had been joined by another officer – 2nd Lt Gibson, of the North Staffordshire Regiment, with whom he had served in the same company while he was training in the Artists Rifles. Gibson had brought 15 of his own men, and their numbers rose with another 30 men drawn equally from the Queens’ and West Kent Regiments. He wrote to his mother later that day [25th] and told her that he and Gibson were being given ‘the responsibility of looking after these 60 men…and I have had a pretty busy day making out lists of working parties etc and getting the men stowed away comfortably in dugouts.’ He hoped that he might be able to stay in the job for some time and that the work would be ‘interesting and fairly comfortable.’ While he feared that he might be taken off the job just in time to go into the line with his battalion again, he resolved to try to look on the bright side – and having the officers of ‘C’ Company living in another part of the trench close by at least meant that he would continue to have access to his mail, and his treasured parcels, two of which, he told her, he would be picking up as soon as he finished writing his letter.

[Next letters: 26 October]