Memoirs & Diaries - War is War - Early Doubts
Crossing the English Channel to France: "Here was I, a young writer
(aged twenty-seven), unmarried but with three people to support, going off
to the war and leaving them to the mercy of God with a separation allowance
of twelve and sixpence a week.
"...I began to think I was rather a mug for being there. I needn't have been. I had joined rather late, but still as a volunteer. Even after conscription had been brought in I might have been kept out on compassionate grounds. I was not fit... and had only got past the doctor through influence. I had no inclination at all for soldiering, and privately knew myself to be a coward.
"Then what the devil was I doing in that rotten cattle-boat, probably on my way out to a bloody death? Professor Freud might answer the question. I hated being thought a funk. I had the strongest disapproval of young and fit civilians without dependants, but could not very well express it while I was a civilian myself...
"Most of my friends who were worth while had vanished... Don't think that I wasn't a patriot. I was willing to die for my country if needs were. But dying for one's country may be a very expensive luxury for which others have to pay. I had not a bean to leave to my mother and two other near relatives. For their sakes I could not afford to die - nor could I for my own, for I was then going through a phase of spiritual trouble.
"I had been brought up as a R.C., but had given up practising my religion because I couldn't quite believe in it. On the other hand, I couldn't quite disbelieve, and if it were all true I realised that things might be very awkward for me if I happened to die in that state of mind. A very weak character? Yes, of course I was."
Next - Army Life
Photographs courtesy of Photos of the Great War website
The Parados was the side of a trench farthest from the enemy.
- Did you know?
