behind the stump of a ruined tree.
Later in the war, it was decided that brothers should not serve together, just as all the men of one village should not serve together.
Marian Oakeshott came again—by train and fly, this time—to see Olive Wellwood. Olive made tea. Tea for survivors who were not surviving well. Both of them thought, but neither of them could say, that grief felt different when it had to be shared not only with each other, but with mothers all over Britain. Marian Oakeshott had gone to see Frank Mallett, with the telegram in her hand. “The English don’t howl,” she said to Frank Mallett. “Maybe they should,” said Frank Mallett. So Marian Oakeshott cried out, at the top of her voice “My son, my son, my son,” and the church echoed it. Then, a little rigid, she went back to being a kindly schoolmistress. She went to visit Olive, but hoped to see Humphry. Humphry was shut in his study. Olive said “My letter says he was killed instantly.”
“So does mine. So do they all.”
And indeed, their letters turned out to be identical, with the same phrases of admiration, affection, for their boy, of sorrow and regret for his death.
“Go and talk to him,” Olive said to Marian.
Marian stood outside the study door. From inside came sounds of sobbing. Marian tried the door, which was locked.
Harry Wellwood was twenty in 1915. His reaction to Robin’s death was to say that he must join up. Olive, who had not wept for Tom, who had not wept for Robin, suddenly began to weep with extraordinary violence. She repeated two words. “No” and “Why?” Over and over. Harry, a gentle creature, scholarly and, since Tom’s death, rather silent, said that everyone was joining up, he felt horrid sitting at home. Humphry, who had gathered himself together enough to go back to writing articles on the conduct and misconduct of the war, gave his son some figures. British casualties were so great that it seemed likely that conscription would be introduced, probably early in 1916. Harry would have to go then. He could wait. “Your mother needs you,” he said, looking at Olive’s wet, mottled red face. Harry did not reply “My country needs me,” though the Kitchener posters were everywhere. He said “People look at me. People who have lost their sons. It doesn’t feel
He joined up. In 1916 he was sent, with the fresh conscripts and the middle-aged reservists, with the British Third Army to the hills and woods and pretty villages of the Somme. It was calm there. They were known as the Deathless Army. Harry practised his French, and once, in Albert, collecting provisions, he ran into Julian Cain, who was in the trenches opposite Thiepval. He told Julian that the Robins were dead—“killed instantly, within two days of each other,” he said. Julian smiled benignly. “Keep an eye out, young Hal,” he said. He did not say, though they all knew it, that they were building up to an important attack. They were constructing railroads and communication trenches, with good revetments and duckboards to walk on. They were practising communication by field telephone and signals. They were exercising their bodies, to make them hard and healthy. They would flow out of the trenches, over No Man’s Land, and take the Germans by surprise, driving them back, and then there would be real warfare again, with marching and galloping armies, charges and feints and acts of courage, the generals believed.
Julian had taken to writing poetry. It was not poetry of despair, nor yet—not yet—savage poetry of anger. It was not poetry about the glorious hour, the glorious dead, and the high calling, either of perfect gallantry or of bugles and fifes. It was poetry about trench names, which in themselves were poetry.
Harry’s battalion was part of III Corps which, in the small hours of July 1st got ready to attack. The British bombardment of the German positions in the villages of Ovillers and La Boisselle had been loud and heavy. The plan was to make a breakthrough in the German defences through which the Cavalry would sweep forward. The gunners of III Corps were cautious about their wire-cutting. They could not cut distant wire, and had not enough ammunition to be sure of cutting what was nearer. Nevertheless, before the attack, the artillery gave up on the wire, and began shelling more distant Germans, which was part of their plan to make way for the Cavalry. Nevertheless the brigades moved forwards. Between the two villages ran Mash Valley, which was No Man’s Land. It was wide. It was eighty yards wide. A mine which was intended to bury the Germans in their dugouts and confuse their response to the attack had been discovered by the Germans, and the miners captured.
Harry waited. He was standing next to an old corporal, Corporal Crowe. Harry thought in bursts, and between the bursts was numb and placid, as though nothing was real. He did not think about the King or the Flag though he did briefly think of the quiet North Downs. He thought: I am young and full of life. His teeth chattered. Corporal Crowe patted his shoulder, which he did not like, and said everyone was frit, no exception. Very brave men, he said, had filled their trousers, a miserable thought which had not occurred to Harry and added to his alarm. I am young and full of life. I have a gun and a knife and must fight. Corporal Crowe handed him a water bottle which turned out to be full of rum, and told him to take a swig. Harry didn’t like rum. It upset his stomach. But he drank quite a lot, and felt vaguer, and giddier, and sick.
They were told to advance. The German shelling was precise. Hundreds of men died behind their own front line, or struggled back to the medical post. Harry got out of the trench in one piece and so did Corporal Crowe. They started to walk forward towards the black stumps of a wood on the skyline. There was noise. Not only shells and bullets, whistling and exploding, but men screaming. They stumbled over the dead and wounded, over men, and pieces of men, and were reduced to crawling, so mashed and messed was the earth and the flesh mashed into it. After a brief time, Harry felt a thump, and found his tunic damp, and then soaked, with his blood. He tried to crawl on, and could not, and other men crawled past him and sprawled in the mud. He bled. He lay still. He knew in the abstract that stomach wounds were nasty. His head churned. He wished he had not had the rum. He wished he could die quickly. He did not. Men crawled round and over him and he came in and out of consciousness. He noticed when there were no more men, and he noticed nightfall, unless the dark was death. It was not. But he was dead by the time he was found by the stretcher-bearers, so they took his identity-tag, and looked in his bloody pockets for letters or photos—there was a publicity photograph of Olive, looking wise and gentle. Then they left him.
Corporal Crowe made it to the German wire, which was uncut. He was caught up in it, as they shot him, and he hung like a beast on a gamekeeper’s gibbet and died very slowly. In this attack three thousand men were casualties.
The 2 Middlesex Battalion had 92.5 per cent casualties. On that first day over forty thousand men were killed or wounded. General Haig remarked that this “cannot be considered severe in view of numbers engaged.”
The Todefright Wellwoods received another telegram. Humphry said “It is bad news” and Olive said “What do you think I thought it was?” She sat in an armchair and simply stared. Humphry said “My dear?” She simply stared. After a time, she heard Humphry, in his study, weeping. It was a strange, childlike, whimpering sobbing, as though he meant to conceal it. She stood up, heavily, and went, and stroked his hair as he sobbed, with his head on his desk.
“It’s like a knife. Cutting the world up, as though it was a cheese. Or butcher’s meat, that’s a better figure of speech. I do love you, Humph, whatever that means. If it helps. It may not. There isn’t much help.”
“I love you, too, if it helps.”
Tragedy had become so commonplace that it was impolite to mention it, or grieve in the open. Olive had the useless thought that she should have protected them, that she had thought of Tom, and taken her attention from these boys, and lost them.
Julian Cain was in the fighting round Thiepval and Thiepval
