a call to arms
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Don’t fret yourself about what I am going to tell you but I think we shall be going away before long. It’s a question whether we shall get any farther than the base and even if we do it won’t be for long [wrong]. It has come from good authority that the Germans are just about done up [wrong] and I see according to this morning’s papers that they have been knocked out all together in Africa [wrong], and now the Turks have turned on them [wrong]. I reckon another week or two will see the finish [wrong]. Well, whenever we go we shall go in good spirits. Our chaps are quite excited at the thought of it and you know if we only land on the French coast we shall get a medal [right].
Private Hugh Smith was killed fifteen months later. Soldiers’ thoughts are well documented. Rarely recorded is the experience from the other side: the feelings of those who had to part with their husband or son, those made utterly powerless to influence events. One of the few to leave such a record was Marie Leighton, the mother of Lieutenant Roland Leighton, an officer in the Worcestershire Regiment, to be immortalised after the war in the memoirs of his fiancée, Vera Brittain. In great detail, she recalled in her book, Boy of My Heart, the first time the son she had given the childhood nickname Little Yeogh Wough left home for France. Marie remembered how that day in early April 1915 she had watched as Roland finished his packing before both of them stopped for tea. Roland would have to leave in ten minutes. He spoke quite bravely and with an attempt at his usual gaiety, but it was easy to see that there was something not quite right about him. Eagerly though he had striven to go, he yet was not going without a pang. But it was not the coward’s pang – Heaven be thanked! There was nothing of fear in it. Downstairs in the kitchen department of the house there was a great and unwonted silence that made itself felt even in our rooms.
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