Duff Cooper is a somewhat ingenuous diary-writer, and, in his poor-little-privileged-boy way, something of a naif, always being caught out by those treacherous foes champagne and pretty women and tumbling dice!
But Duff’s no dummy, either. Or, at least, his grounding in the classics is solid enough to impress (or attempt to impress) his semi-fiancée Diana Manners with a bracketing volley of apposite quotations. (It shouldn’t work–she has been on the receiving end of letters from no lesser pen than Raymond Asquith, perhaps the sharpest wit we have lost. But then again Duff, in addition to being single, has other charms…)
B.E.F., June 7
I am writing this in my tent after tea… there is a little grave wherein stands my bed, so that I lie no higher than the ground. So I am supposed to be immune from bombs, and so should anyone say to me after dinner “Will you walk out of the air? I could reply, “Into my grave.” Do you always follow my quotations, or misquotations?
I do not. But a helpful editor gives Hamlet, act II, scene 2.
At night one candle makes a tent quite light and I feel very romantic in mine. I think of Saul in his and David playing to him, and of Achilles when he wouldn’t come out, and of Richard’s night before Bosworth, and Brutus and Cassius both in one tent and I’m not surprised they quarrelled.
This comes off more as dopey romanticism than either vainglory or compulsive over-referencing–but yes, under canvas, he can feel closer to the eternal/Homeric/Biblical/Roman/Medieval warrior rather than an officer who must worry about trench foot and enfilading machine guns, and is overwhelmingly most likely to die from a shot or shell that wasn’t even aimed, particularly, at him.
There is a new moon and a new star. may they shine kindly on us and make us happy.
Amusingly, Diana too will learn of this “new star”–no doubt a popular scientific tidbit in the contemporary press–and read the omens quite the other way round:
Venetia… told me about the new star that was coming to destroy us in two years. I turned quite white and sick with horror…
And then another way–those pesky omens!
…then I saw it all as so perfect from another aspect. The war would stop, for who would fight in hell for no gains since annihilation was certain, and you would come back and we would be so happy in those two years…[1]
Star light, star bright, star viewed from opposite sides of the experiential gulf by a new soldier excited for battle and a beloved left behind, superstitiously terrified of what the future, and the telegram boy, will bring…
Vera Brittain has not been long home–and therefore she did not miss the costly German bombing raid on Étaples by very much. Only recently did she learn of the cost, and today, a century back, she wrote this poem:
Vengeance is Mine
(In Memory of the Sisters who died in the Great Air Raid upon Hospitals at Etaples)
Who shall avenge us for anguish unnamable,
Rivers of scarlet and crosses of grey,
Terror of night-time and blood-lust untamable,
Hate without pity where broken we lay?
How could we help them, in agony calling us,
Those whom we laboured to comfort and save,
How still their moaning, whose hour was befalling us,
Crushed in a horror more dark than the grave?Burning of canvas and smashing of wood above—
Havoc of Mercy’s toil—shall He forget
Us that have fallen, Who numbers in gracious love
Each tiny creature whose life is man’s debt?Will He not hear us, though speech is now failing us—
Voices too feeble to utter a cry?
Shall they not answer, the foemen assailing us,
Women who suffer and women who die?Who shall avenge us for anguish unnamable,
Rivers of scarlet and crosses of grey,
Terror of night-time and blood-lust untamable,
Hate without pity where broken we lay?
It is easy to see why this sort of thing will appeal to publishers–“Voice of a V.A.D.” indeed. But without exactly intending to do so, Brittain has produced propaganda, ascribing “blood-lust” to night-bombing when the real enemy is the formless, ever-expanding, ill-conceived and ill-defined war of attrition. Perhaps a question we might ask later on is “how long does it take to get from using phrases like ‘foeman assailing us’ to achieving a truly anti-war frame of mind?”
And finally, today, a letter from Salter Clark, a young American volunteer recently arrived in France. His brother Coleman, serving with the French artillery, died of wounds a week ago, but Salter will not learn of this until later in the summer, when the news has gone to New York and back to France. So there will be no plea for “vengeance” any time soon. Instead, the excitement of being new to the war zone, and writing home about it–and for the reader, the terribly sad ironic distance of knowing how much this war has already cost him.
June 7, 1918.
We are now cantonnés in a beautiful section of the country, the companies quartered each in a little farm. The French people stay in the house, and we are everywhere else. . . . Since I left the States I have slept in a hammock, on a mess table, in the sand, on the board flooring of a tent, on hay, and now on the good old sod. I believe I could sleep on a rock now…
Every time we are out on the road the kids come around, asking for something, crackers and money principally; they have a way of taking your hand, and insisting on walking along with the column. It is mighty hard to refuse sometimes; you say, “Non,” then they say, ’’Mais, oui.”
This is a beautiful region through here; long, rolling hills, with views of the countryside stretching out before you for miles; old stone houses, with tile roofs; and here and there a stone chapel. Everything is either old or very young. Women, boys, and old men work in the fields. The farm-house where we are located is kept by Belgian refugees who work it for the government; barn built into the house; from the outside it is hard to tell which part the cows and pigs live in. The war is hard on pigs over here, as there is no garbage for them; they eat grass all day long, and it keeps them busy.
The inns are filled with soldiers, English and American, but no French. Last night our regimental band gave a concert in the village square. They played Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” which sounded great; “Darktown Strutter’s Ball,” which is the most popular rag in the army; and ended with “God Save the King,” “The Marseillaise”, and “Star Spangled Banner.” Americans stand at attention while the first two are played, and salute the third, always facing the music. The whole was very impressive, especially as it was done in that little square, with the chapel and graveyard on one side, and the two inns on the other. We are here for our own country, but when you’re here in France, and see the women in mourning and the faded light blue uniforms of the French soldiers, I feel that
we are here for France too.[2]
