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Authors: Catherine Bailey
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page that followed was even more puzzling. Four days – 28 June to 1 July – were entered on the one page.
On 30 June and 1 July, John had written just two words: ‘Usual day.’
But then how could they possibly have been
usual days
? At 19.00 hours on the evening of the 29th, 138th Brigade had marched out of Ouderdom along the wagon track up to the front line. In their first forty-eight hours in the trenches they had come under heavy shellfire. John was at Reninghelst, the division’s headquarters; he was ADC to its commanding officer: he would have seen the dispatches from the Front. On both 30 June and 1 July, he would have known that nine miles away, at Sanctuary Wood, all hell was breaking loose. So why hadn’t he referred to the fighting?
I turned to the next page of the diary.
July 2nd 1915 Friday
Reninghelst, Poperinghe Road
Usual day. I went after lunch to Ypres Cathedral to get a few more fragments of the frieze of the screen – found a lot more.
Again, there was no mention of the war. John, it appears, had spent that afternoon souvenir hunting in the shelled ruins of the Cathedral.
He had already been there twice that week: ‘Went to Ypres Cathedral,’ he recorded on 28 June: ‘The only thing left, curiously, is the marble and brass screen against the Chapel in the south side of the nave. A portion of the screen at one end has been destroyed. I picked up a bit of the fragments of the frieze.’ The following afternoon, he was there again: ‘Got a good few more pieces,’ he noted: ‘I have put together the pieces I got yesterday and want to find more pieces to try and complete the frieze plaque which was broken to pieces.’
On 2 July – having spent the afternoon at the cathedral – John returned to headquarters. At 8 p.m., General Clifford, the Commanding Officer of 138th Brigade, sent a communiqué from the Salient. The brigade had suffered thirty-five casualties in twenty-four hours: its highest figure in a single day so far. A number of the casualties came from ‘B’ company in the 4th Leicestershires. It was John’s own company; he had known the men personally. From 1909 – when the battalion was formed – they had spent their summers training together. It seemed incredible that he had failed to enter this distressing news in his diary.
As I read on, it was clear that pressure of work did not account for the omission. I was left with the impression that, while 138th Brigade was fighting in the Salient, neither John, nor his General, Edward Stuart Wortley, were overly occupied.
On the morning of 3 July, the brigade’s fourth day in the line, they had left headquarters: ‘Started at 8 alone with the General, and Tanner the chauffeur, to go to Rouen in the Rolls. Got there at one (two punctures), inspected the drafts. Then we went sightseeing.’ They seemed to be in no hurry to get back to HQ; instead, they spent the night at the Hôtel de la Poste in Rouen. After dinner, John visited a nearby brothel: ‘I rogered a woman in the Maison Stephane. Not good,’ he records.
Something wasn’t right. It was as if a different person was writing the diary. Throughout April, he had crammed the pages with vivid accounts of the progress of the war. Yet two months on, he appeared to have completely disengaged from the events going on around him.
I turned back to look at the earlier entries. On the night of 22 April, when the Germans had fired poison gas for the first time, he had been with the 46th North Midland at St-Jans-Cappel, twelve miles to the south-west of the Ypres Salient. On the morning of the 23rd, he and a group of officers had driven to Sharpenburg Hill to watch the battle from an official observation point. It had continued for the remainder of that week. Keyed up by the fighting, John had followed the course of the battle, often updating his diary twice in a day:
23 April: Up to Sharpenburg to see what there was to be seen of the battle just north of Ypres. Anxiously
On 30 June and 1 July, John had written just two words: ‘Usual day.’
But then how could they possibly have been
usual days
? At 19.00 hours on the evening of the 29th, 138th Brigade had marched out of Ouderdom along the wagon track up to the front line. In their first forty-eight hours in the trenches they had come under heavy shellfire. John was at Reninghelst, the division’s headquarters; he was ADC to its commanding officer: he would have seen the dispatches from the Front. On both 30 June and 1 July, he would have known that nine miles away, at Sanctuary Wood, all hell was breaking loose. So why hadn’t he referred to the fighting?
I turned to the next page of the diary.
July 2nd 1915 Friday
Reninghelst, Poperinghe Road
Usual day. I went after lunch to Ypres Cathedral to get a few more fragments of the frieze of the screen – found a lot more.
Again, there was no mention of the war. John, it appears, had spent that afternoon souvenir hunting in the shelled ruins of the Cathedral.
He had already been there twice that week: ‘Went to Ypres Cathedral,’ he recorded on 28 June: ‘The only thing left, curiously, is the marble and brass screen against the Chapel in the south side of the nave. A portion of the screen at one end has been destroyed. I picked up a bit of the fragments of the frieze.’ The following afternoon, he was there again: ‘Got a good few more pieces,’ he noted: ‘I have put together the pieces I got yesterday and want to find more pieces to try and complete the frieze plaque which was broken to pieces.’
On 2 July – having spent the afternoon at the cathedral – John returned to headquarters. At 8 p.m., General Clifford, the Commanding Officer of 138th Brigade, sent a communiqué from the Salient. The brigade had suffered thirty-five casualties in twenty-four hours: its highest figure in a single day so far. A number of the casualties came from ‘B’ company in the 4th Leicestershires. It was John’s own company; he had known the men personally. From 1909 – when the battalion was formed – they had spent their summers training together. It seemed incredible that he had failed to enter this distressing news in his diary.
As I read on, it was clear that pressure of work did not account for the omission. I was left with the impression that, while 138th Brigade was fighting in the Salient, neither John, nor his General, Edward Stuart Wortley, were overly occupied.
On the morning of 3 July, the brigade’s fourth day in the line, they had left headquarters: ‘Started at 8 alone with the General, and Tanner the chauffeur, to go to Rouen in the Rolls. Got there at one (two punctures), inspected the drafts. Then we went sightseeing.’ They seemed to be in no hurry to get back to HQ; instead, they spent the night at the Hôtel de la Poste in Rouen. After dinner, John visited a nearby brothel: ‘I rogered a woman in the Maison Stephane. Not good,’ he records.
Something wasn’t right. It was as if a different person was writing the diary. Throughout April, he had crammed the pages with vivid accounts of the progress of the war. Yet two months on, he appeared to have completely disengaged from the events going on around him.
I turned back to look at the earlier entries. On the night of 22 April, when the Germans had fired poison gas for the first time, he had been with the 46th North Midland at St-Jans-Cappel, twelve miles to the south-west of the Ypres Salient. On the morning of the 23rd, he and a group of officers had driven to Sharpenburg Hill to watch the battle from an official observation point. It had continued for the remainder of that week. Keyed up by the fighting, John had followed the course of the battle, often updating his diary twice in a day:
23 April: Up to Sharpenburg to see what there was to be seen of the battle just north of Ypres. Anxiously
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