Sherriff’s general depression and listlessness continued to restrict the number and length of the letters he sent home. Having written nothing for three days he now dashed off a quick one-page to his mother, telling her that he had been innoculated, which reminded him of the same thing happening while he was in the Artists Rifles – although this time it had only given him a ‘bad arm’, and he did not feel bad ‘personally’: nevertheless the arm itself was enough to earn him a day off.

Sherriff’s younger brother Bundy, in uniform, c1918. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/6/6/5)

Training was continuing much as usual:

‘We still go on with the same old training each day with nothing exciting to tell you about – we train just as we did in England, starting at 8 o’clock with physical drill and finish about 3 o’clock after which your time is your own, to either walk into the nearest town or read or do anything. I think I told you I had a little room at a farm as my billet with quite a nice bed.’

Although his letter writing had slowed down, he was continuing to receive letters from home: ‘I got a letter from you today, dear, also one form Beryl and one from Bundy’. He told her (as he had Pips, a few days earlier), that the parcels which had come for him while he was in the rest home had been consumed by the Mess (‘I told them to if any parcels came in while I was away, otherwise they would have gone bad or any pastry etc, stale’.)

And that was where he signed off, apologising that he had to go on parade.

[Next letter: 24 February]

Sherriff wrote two letters to Pips today, and the variance in tone between the two is quite marked.

He begins his first letter rather brightly, commenting on the haul of letters he has received since being back at the Battalion: ‘About 7 from you, 6 from Mother, one from Beryl [his older sister], one from Bundy [his younger brother], one from Mr Freeth [his manager at the Oxford Street branch of Sun Insurance], and a New Year present from my old Company Commander [Captain Tetley] in the form of a letter case commemorating our New Year’s day, when we had a pretty hot time for 12 hours in the line [described here].’

He had been back with the Battalion for three days, he told Pips, and they were ‘resting’ a good way behind the line. Owing to censorship restrictions he could not tell his father his whereabouts, but we know from the Battalion Diary that A & B Companies were billeted at Bas Rieux; while C (Sherriff’s Company) and D Companies were at Can Trainne. He could, however, tell him something of what they were doing:

‘…although the word ‘rest’ is used we are on the go pretty well all day – from 8:30am to 4:00pm, the last hour being devoted to compulsory games, football chiefly, and some cross-country running is being arranged.’

He told Pips that he had gone for a 2-mile run the day before with another officer, and had found it ‘quite invigorating’. The training they were doing was much the same as they would do in England – ‘Physical drill, bayonet fighting, musketry etc. etc.’ They were billeted in small villages, with their Mess in a farm house. He was billeted in a farm house as well, while his platoon lived in a barn ‘with straw beds – very comfortable too’.

He ended his first letter of the day promising a longer letter later on, but, when the time came, a mood of depression appeared to have settled on him: ‘I cannot pull myself together properly to write a good letter… I feel all I want to do is to sit and do absolutely nothing…’.

He told Pips that, during the day, the men had been at the firing range, which had taken up most of their time, since ‘there was a march of some miles there and back’. Unfortunately there had been a thaw during the previous couple of days, so now there was little ice to be seen, and ‘the old programme of Mud, Mud, Mud, has started again.’

Perhaps it was the mud depressing him, or perhaps it was just the continuation of the ‘nervy feeling’ that had persisted for some weeks. Even at the officers’ rest station he had struggled to concentrate, and his letter writing had slowed to a crawl. Nor can it have helped that the Battalion’s time in rest looked likely to be shorter than he had anticipated: ‘We have now had just a week of [rest] and we have one more before we move back to the line again – I am afraid I don’t feel very much effect of the rest yet – I cannot get away from worrying’.

[He seems to have struggled to shake off the feeling of lethargy and depression, since his letters writing remained patchy during the following couple of weeks.]

[Next letter: 22 February]

Back with his battalion, Sherriff had spent the day as Orderly Officer, which meant that, by the time he was able to write to Pips, he was ‘so sleepy that I can hardly keep my eyes open – so this will not be a long or very interesting letter’. Perhaps the next day, if he was not so busy, he would send a long letter ‘telling you as much as I am allowed to tell you about our work while in rest and while I was getting back to the battalion, hunting for t all over the countryside’.

He complained that he had not received any letters from home during his days at the officers’ rest home – in fact it had been three weeks since he had last received a letter, and he was ‘naturally rather anxious for news’. He had been told that a couple of parcels had arrived for him, but that ‘as I was away they were consumed by the Mess’. He signed off by wishing everyone well at home, and with the hope ‘that I shall soon be able to get the latest news from there’.

[Next letters: 19 February]

On the move, Sherriff wrote briefly to tell his mother that his fortnight’s rest was up, and that he  had spent most off the previous day travelling back to his Regiment – but since they, in turn, had gone back to rest, ‘we are having a job to find them’.

‘The rest has certainly done me good in some ways,’ he wrote, ‘but I still feel very nervy sometimes…I had a very good time during my last fortnight as it was an ideal place to rest – it is funny that several men got tired of the inactivity and asked to go back – I should not have minded several more weeks of it.’

Having now been out in France for five months (‘it seems ages, doesn’t it’), he felt that it would now not be much longer before he was given leave – perhaps another couple of months or so. And if the battalion were to go out to rest for a month the time would pass all the quicker (‘I am hoping there will be some cross-country running etc’.

[The battalion’s stay in rest would last only for a little under three weeks, but at least cross-country running would be on the menu of activities.]

[Next letter: 15 February]

‘I have now had a fortnight’s rest here,’ wrote Sherriff to Pips, ‘so I expect I shall soon be leaving now…Although I feel better for the rest, I don’t think my nerves have improved much; any noises worry me and I can’t set my mind properly to anything – but I will have to go back to the Regiment I expect, and see how I get on – the feelings may wear off later on’.

His daily routine was unchanged: ‘Get up. Breakfast. Walk. Lunch. Read. Walk. Tea. Write letter. Read. Walk. Dinner. Read. Bed.’ He was enjoying the walks in the countryside, although the landscape was very flat, with no hedges. There were several rivers and canals, all frozen solid, topped by snow, which had fallen a few weeks before.

As for his reading, he was currently enjoying a ‘very good school story…called David Blaize, by E F Benson’ [published in 1916]. He was sure Pips would enjoy it. He had just finished The Antiquary, and was now ‘on Old Mortality, which, although I have started several times, I have not been able to get on with.’

Other than that, he apologised, he had ‘nothing much to say, so goodbye for the present, hoping all are well at home.’

[Next letter: 12 February]

Sherriff’s letter home today was brief – partly because, as he told his mother, ‘I am having such a nice quiet time here that I nearly failed with my letter…and I have left it late…’

He had been enjoying watching the skating, which had been interesting because ‘all kinds and conditions of people indulge in it – officers (French, English and Portuguese), French women, English and French soldiers and all sorts of civilians – they all get on well together’.

He was feeling ‘very much better for my rest’, but knew that it was now drawing near the end. He had been to the dentist three times, and had three teeth ‘stopped’, and the rest passed as ‘sound’. He felt the dentist had done them ‘quite well’, but that he ‘lacked the delicacy of Dr Wallace.’ His cut hand [incurred in a fall while in the Rest Home] was healing up as well.

And there, with an apology that he could not think of anything else to say, his letter ended.

[Next letter: 7 February]

‘I have still a few days of rest left and I am enjoying them quite well,’ he wrote to Pips, ‘walking every day several miles in various directions…’. The canal was still thick with ice, and the weather was intensely cold, ‘although you feel it very little as there is no wind’. In fact, he had been for a walk with an officer from the Army Service Corps, and ‘after having a few slides on the ice we walked back without overcoats as we were much too warm.’ While walking by the canal they had watched a man trying to cut his barge out of the ice with an axe (‘but after three chops he fell down and gave up the effort as a bad job’). They had also come across a group of people, a couple of them armed with shotguns, apparently hunting for squirrels in the hedgerows, but since they were very excitable with their guns the pair had quickly walked on.

The previous day he had been to a service at the local cathedral – the first Catholic service he had ever attended. He gave his father a detailed description of the whole service, which began with an old man lighting candles round the altar (very slowly), followed by much muttering and ‘people coming in and out just as they please’. Just as they were thinking of going a priest came round from behind a screen along with ‘an elderly person with a cocked hat decorated with red ribbon, a sword girt to his side and a spear – a kind of beadle…I suppose, and quite out of place in such solemn surroundings.’

Extract from letter to Pips, 2 February 1917. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/1/1/3/9]

Sherriff had obviously not enjoyed the service, for he proceeded to let rip in his letter in an uncharacteristically bad-tempered tirade:

‘I don’t think you will think what I have said sacrilegious,’ he wrote, ‘but it is all really too absurd for such present days – the root of the religion, of course, is sound – but the absurd ceremonies and tawdry, trumpery decorations, all obviously intended to impress people and an insult to their intelligence at that – what a pity that such a fine sound doctrine should be utterly spoilt, almost ruined by the pantomimic way it is conducted – it is almost an insult to the magnificent building in which it is conducted. If a religious service can be held in a broken down shell battered schoolroom as we have it – where the chaplain gives a plain sensible sermon and a few hymns are sung, I cannot see why people should worship under the same doctrine amongst gaudy trappings…I cannot see why vast quantities of candles should be lit and that each person should have two chairs, one to kneel on and one to sit on, and why a man with a cocked hat with red ribbons on it, and a sword and spear should be necessary…but I suppose cleverer men than us are responsible for the service being carried out so as to be unintelligible to everybody, so we must not complain…….”

[Perhaps the bad temper was just an indication of the fact that he was not yet fully recovered from his neuralgia and headaches, and was stressing over whether and when he should speak to the doctor.]

[Next letter: 6 February]

‘I made a visit to the dentist yesterday,’ wrote Sherriff to his mother, ‘and I now know the value of Dr Wallace, for this one simply goes at it hammer and tongs, not minding what he grinds – but I suppose it is better than having no dentist at all.’

Sherriff’s sister, Beryl, in nurses uniform (around 1918). (By permission of the Surrey History Centre, Ref: 3813/14/1/4)

The weather was still cold, the frost as hard as ever, and all the local waterways were frozen to at least six inches, he reckoned. Skating was ‘in full swing’ he wrote, and he had watched it on several occasions, admiring the English officers and French people who were able to skate well. He had been for a walk the day before with two others, and had tried to get ‘all thought of the war out of my mind’, but he was finding it impossible. And it was a difficult subject to broach with the doctor:

‘you feel so guilty and it looks just as though you are simply frightened to go up the line – and what cure can there possibly be for that? I keep putting off the time of talking to him, but it must be soon – I feel I would be willing to do anything – resign my commission and work at any kind of work so long as I am only away from the awful crash of explosions which sometimes quite numb me…’

At that point he quickly apologised to his mother that he was about to cut her letter short, for he had completely forgotten his sister Beryl’s birthday the day before, and he had to write to her straightaway.

[Next letter: 2 February]