David Jones Draws His Gun; Edward Heron-Allen is Dull to Fear; Kate Luard on Leave at Last; Siegfried Sassoon on Hunters and Dreamers

“Boche Machine Gun Captured by the 15th R.W.F.”

David Jones had some time on his hands today, a century back. Or so it would seem from the drawing–a beautiful thing–he made of one of his battalion’s trophies from the first day of the battle. A German machine gun, probably one that had been firing into the assaulting troops that very morning, is caught in a pose at once slightly tense–like the animal it should recall, at least metaphorically, but never fully does–and infinitely calm. It’s a charismatic machine, made for killing by means of gears and trajectories, but its roughed-in foot gives it less the air of a trophy suitable for mounting than of a predator that might yet spring again.

Edward Heron-Allen got a good chance to say “I told you so,” today, a century back, as German aircraft returned for the first raid on London in months, and the first night raid by the new generation of heavy bombers:

On Tuesday (the 4th) I went up to town with a friend who was firmly convinced that the aeroplane danger was at an end as far as London was concerned… I incurred much pitying contempt by saying that I did not believe this…

That very night I was wakened at midnight by my housekeeper at Hamilton Terrace… I got up and went to the window. The air was full of the loud hum, and throbbing reverberations which announce the presence of the new big German ‘Gotha’ aeroplanes. As I looked out, a crash shook the house…

It was a fine night with overhanging clouds, and I went out into Hamilton Terrace. The enemy machines were directly over our heads, and I could follow their roar as they went off to the southward, and I went back to bed and to sleep. An hour later another rapping on my door…

This time I did not bother to get up but lay and listened for about 20 minutes when the infernal racket went on. I cannot account for the fact that there never entered my head for one moment the idea that at any moment my house might be blown to pieces, and I was asleep again before it was over! It was not bravery or pluck–it was simply that our sense of fear is dulled…^[1]

Heron-Allen, at least in his own estimation, is a quick study. After several years in disgruntled letter-to-editor mode, he has only recently been fitted with a home guard uniform, but he enjoys being a soldier.  And by his second air-raid warning (in the person of a servant, not a klaxon–this is only a foreshadowing of the greater Blitz) he is dull to the fear of death from above…

Not that courage under fire–even if it is the fire of a handful of bombers attacking an enormous city–isn’t praiseworthy, but it’s amusing to think of Heron-Allen as a self-satisfied middle-aged veteran when we also have a letter, today, from Kate Luard. Fortunately for her–and unfortunately for us, a century on, since her diary kept the various swellings and burstings of Third Ypres in focus for us these last five weeks–she is now going on leave.

Wednesday morning, September 5th. Dazzling and deafening. We scuttled in and out of the Elephant [shelter] till 3 a.m. and every one is alive this morning. Probably we shall all be off somewhere to-day. I’ll wire from Folkestone if and when I get there…^[2]

After her leave there is another gap in her published letters as Luard is sent to supervise other units. It will not be until February that she returns to C.C.S. 32 and we will hear from her regularly once again.

Finally, today, Siegfried Sassoon is still living his strange life as a healthy officer in a war hospital, a recovering pacifist still in the army, and a well-known poet mentoring a greater talent. His letters to Lady Ottoline Morrell, a sponsor of his anti-war protest phase, tend to display this discomfort from rather unflattering angles, but today he writes to her of one thing that fighting soldiers and pacifists must agree upon: the pain of loss. And yet something about the tone of these letters is still distinctly snobbish, even if the ideas expressed are not necessarily awful…

5 September 1917, Craiglockhart

My dear Ottoline, I am glad you have forgiven me! I would have written, but have been knocked flat once again by the best sporting friend I ever had getting killed on August 14—in France. He was indeed my greatest friend before the war—a Winchester boy named Gordon Harbord, whom I met in 1908 and saw constantly afterwards. When the unintellectual people go it is much the worst–one feels they’ve so much to lose.

I had been busy writing a cub-hunting poem for him during the days between August 15 and the time I heard of if.

Things go on the same here.

I wonder if Massingham would care to use the sonnet in The Hydra—show it to him when you see him.^[3]

So, interestingly enough, it is not just Wilfred Owen who is proudly posting out copies of The Hydra. The sonnet in question is “Dreamers,” which Sassoon gave to his new friend for the September 1st issue of the magazine.

Dreamers

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,

Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.

In the great hour of destiny they stand,

Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win

Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,

And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,

Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,

And mocked by hopeless longing to regain

Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.