Sherriff was feeling unwell – a touch of influenza which made him want to lie down and sleep all the time – a practice which he did not consider to be very healthy. But his mother was not to worry, because he would take his compressed medicine, and, if he really felt bad, would visit the doctor straight away. The worst thing about the illness was that it seemed to affect his nerves:
‘They shelled this district again this morning and really I am quite ashamed of the way it makes me tremble. When I hear a shell whistle overhead I immediately get that sort of cold feeling all up my spine if you know what I mean, and my tongue feels all dry. Yesterday, they shelled the district just as I was sitting down to lunch and it immediately made me feel quite sick – with no appetite at all for dinner…I hope my nerves will improve, though, [as] it is not at all a pleasant feeling to get nervous so quickly and easily.’
A ‘Minney’ bursting. From Memories of Active Service, Vol 1, facing page 200. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/3/9/3/2)
After asking about her work at the hospital, and remarking on how much more he would rather be doing her job than his own, his thoughts quickly turned to his own nervousness once more:
I don’t know why it is, but some men seem to stroll about the trenches when they are shelling just as though nothing were happening – they must be made very differently to me, for it makes me tremble and breathe hard even if I just go round to the lavatories. Once, coming back, they sent a shrapnel shell whizzing over and [it] burst a bit behind us; I felt very much like running for my shelter when I saw a man climb up onto the parapet and look over as unconcerned as possible and say: “that was a near one”….This morning a flight of wild duck flew overhead and both armies began firing at them – unfortunately a lot of the bullets came down on our roof and round about which frightened me as much as anything.’
He noted that, while he had been bragging about how quiet his current job was, the recent shelling had changed his mind, and he and Gibson were now asking their servants to fill some sandbags with earth and put them on the roof of the dugout – ‘I expect they think we are cowards,’ he wrote.
[Next letter: 15 November]