Again, most of the first bit of this was not written by me, but by Jessie and Janet Tree. I changed the order and took out some of it, but I can't claim credit for it. The end bits are mine from the bit about the Belgian refugees on. The baby Betty that is referred to was my mother-in-law.

I think it might be a bit over 5000 words, so I may have to put it into 2 sections.

1915

I can not even pretend that my writing now is anything but about my family. And how hard it is to write it all down this year.

Peter is, perhaps, more spiritually idealistic than his brothers, and war in the early days, when its horror had been untasted, is for him chiefly a crusade, a golden opportunity which made all monotony and hardship gloriously worth while.

Charlie, at Whitsuntide, when mother expressed worries about his likely posting to France said with great earnestness, ‘I'm just the one to go, mother. I've no ties to keep me, and there's not one of us who goes that will come back, I know that.’

Of Charlie's life as a soldier there is little to be said. The tale is soon told. After passing through the O.T.E. at Royston he was given a commission in the 9th Worcesters, and spent six months last year and the first part this year in training his men, moving about from one part of England to another according to the whim of the War Office. He spent most of the year on various parts of Salisbury Plain. He got, I think, about as much interest out of the war as possible considering how distasteful such a life was to a man of his highly-strung temperament. He said little, but just on one or two occasions he gave vent to his real opinions.

On one occasion he was asked how he liked the army.’ Like it?’ He wheeled round on the questioner with a look of astonishment. That was all, but those two words spoke volumes. But he never let this distaste show in his work, and what probably saved him from utter boredom was the genuine interest he took in his men, and he was as a result much beloved by them. He very soon won, too, the affection of his senior officers, especially of the Colonel, who, we are told, never went anywhere if he could help it without taking ‘the Tree boy’ with him. In this connection one of his great friends in the battalion wrote: ‘The men of his platoon would do anything for him, and among the officers he was recognised as the ablest of the subalterns, as he was most certainly the most popular.’

He was on the whole more, easily affected by circumstances. The small things of life worried him much more, and he was almost hyper conscientious in his dealings with others. I remember on almost his last leave he did some small errands for mother, and on reckoning up his accounts he could not quite make them balance, being about two pence out. He worked himself into quite a state because he could not trace the missing pence!

In June of this year, after very nearly a whole year of training, and after many false alarms, the 9th Worcesters left England. They went in the end rather suddenly, and Charlie never had his last leave, in many ways rather a good thing, for as it is our last memory connected with him is of a peculiarly happy Whitsuntide, with no thought of long farewells to overshadow the meeting.

Somehow we never expected him to come through. I don't know how it was, we do not feel the same about the others, but about him we all had a deep conviction that when his good-bye came it would be a final one. This feeling was shared, or perhaps it would be more correct to say was led, by himself. That he looked forward to no future in this world is evidenced by his retort to someone who was meditating on what he would do after the war. ‘What's the good of worrying about that? You don't suppose any of us will come out of this alive, do you?’

The battalion left Avonmouth in the Cawdor Castle on the 22nd of June, and sailed for the Dardanelles, the voyage taking about three weeks. We had three long cheery letters from him during the voyage, which in spite of rather close quarters he seems to have enjoyed greatly. He was much interested in the glimpse of Eastern life, and was particularly - fascinated by Malta and the Mediterranean coast. Writing to our old nurse, Miss Rochfort, about a glimpse he had had of Tangier, where she had once lived, he said, ‘Saw the Outskirts of Tangier the other day, and lost my heart to it. Am praying to St. Anthony about it. Having a splendid time.’ (Miss Rochfort is a firm devotee of St. Anthony, and Charlie used often to tease her about it.) From Alexandria he wrote: ‘The chief disadvantage of Egypt is the plague of flies, which is still going strong, and the smells in the narrower streets are novel rather than pleasant.’

After two or three days in Alexandria the battalion sailed for the Dardanelles. He wrote of that, ‘The opinion of authority is that we shall gain a big success out here before long, say within four or five weeks.’

The following is the last letter we had from him;

‘5.5. Cawdor Castle, Near the Dardanelle;

‘I wrote yesterday to say we were going up to the trenches, but we were put off for a day. However, we are going this afternoon, and land there sometime after dark. I don't suppose we shall go into the firing line for a day or two.

We have an ample supply of papers and weeklies coming out. Everyone is looking very fit after the voyage and in the best of spirits. We heard this morning that the British gained a useful line of trenches yesterday. I rather gather from what we hear that we are likely to be on the defensive now for several days, so that our first experience of war will be fairly safe. I believe one of our troopships had a narrow escape from a submarine on the way out, but none have been hit.

I am glad to hear that Frank and Evers have been promoted. Frank ought to be enjoying his three weeks in London. I don't suppose he will learn as much about soldiering as I shall during the next few weeks, but he will probably enjoy it more. I expect we shall find it a bit hot at first, but we are wearing light clothes, and shall do very little moving about for some time. The nights are very pleasantly - cool out here except on the lower deck, where the atmosphere is stifling.

We have regularly been playing bridge at nights in an atmosphere thick with smoke, all port-holes shut. So we have no fear of asphyxiating gases now, as a matter of fact I don't think they are using them out here. Everyone seems to agree that the Turks fight very fair. I shall be able to let you know myself presently. I am afraid we are going the rest of the way in small boats, trawlers, or destroyers, so that we shall probably be thoroughly sea-sick before the day is out.

I think I marked enough books in that list to last till Constantinople, when I shall doubtless be able to get some myself.’

Events proved how wrong his optimism was. The slaughter was awful. Out of the whole battalion hardly one returned to tell the tale, if they escaped in one engagement it was only to be cut down in the next. What exactly happened we never heard from him, but we gathered a fairly full account from what a fellow officer wrote, and afterwards told us.

He wrote, ‘You will have heard before you get this from the War Office of your son's death. It was on the night of the 17th that he was with his platoon in a part of the line where the enemy was only about fifty yards away. In the middle of the night the Turks set fire to our barricades in front of our trench, and your boy received a bayonet wound while supervising the defence of the most critical point in the trench line. He was so brave about it all, pretended that it was only a scratch, and was only taken away on a stretcher when things were going all right. He was brought down to the sea the day before yesterday, and died last night on a hospital ship.

He was the bravest of the brave. The day before he was wounded he repaired a parapet with some of his platoon under heavy fire with the coolness of a seasoned soldier. The men of his platoon would do anything for him. Among the officers he was recognised as the ablest of the subalterns, as he was certainly the most popular. As for myself, I have lost my greatest friend in the regiment. Since last September we have lived together and worked together, till I have come to feel him to be a brother.

I have collected as much of his kit as I can, and am sending it to be forwarded to you. I took out all the tobacco in it and gave it to the men of his platoon, as I felt sure he would like it to have been used in some such way.’

To many it seems highly tragic that he should have thrown up a brilliant career for two days' fighting. Perhaps in one way it was a waste, and yet to us who knew his highly-strung temperament it is a matter of thankfulness that he had been spared further horrors. We do not look upon it as ‘waste' for we are convinced that he is carrying on higher service ‘beyond the stars’.

Charlie did not live long enough in the actual battle zone to formulate any fresh ideas about spiritual values, but on first joining up seemed to realise the Herculean struggle into which we were plunged. He saw Europe locked in a death struggle more terrible than had ever been witnessed before, and he suffered from no illusions as to the awfulness of our task. But his sacrifice was quite cheerful, quite unostentatious, and quite conscious withal. He felt that he was going to his death, and this as the months went by gave a seriousness to his outlook on life, and a deepened sense of responsibility very marked to us who watched him. Yet was there no sign of bitterness about him, rather a sweetness of disposition seemed to grow upon him; he was convinced of the righteousness of our cause, and that sufficed.

This is what Pete wrote after Charlie’s death.

‘Death in such a way is far from being a matter of horror. It becomes the means of a glorious and noble entry into better things. When the first sting has worn off we shall all regard Charlie's memory as something sacred and noble. We must remember that it is only by the spirit of sacrifice that any real good can come, and that those who have sacrificed themselves in this way are now enjoying the peace for which they strove. I know how hard it is to bear any gap like this, but it is only temporary, and will lead to a happier reunion afterwards.’

Just a few notes about Frank. It was in May he wrote to Peter on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday:

‘For myself I am absolutely sure that the war will very soon be over, and that your next birthday will see you back in civilian clothes.’ He was always optimistic.

No amount of chaff could upset Frank’s cheerfulness which seemed to exude from him and many were the jests which he bore with imperturbable good humour. I remember his telling how that in camp he always drank Apollinaris Water while his fellow-officers sipped their whisky, and a laugh was often raised at the expense of him and his ‘dear Polly.’

There is nothing of special interest to record of these months of Frank’s training between September last year and June this year. There was the usual routine, the monotony broken from time to time by a move from one part of the Plain to another, and as the summer came on by several false alarms that ‘this move did really mean France this time.’ At last, at the end of June, about two weeks after Charlie's departure, Frank went to France. It was there, of course, that he received the news of Charlie's death. He must have felt it keenly, for they had been exceptionally good friends, and to have received the news and to have to carry on in such surroundings as though nothing had happened must have been excessively hard.

We can guess something of how he felt it from the letter which he wrote to father and mother about this first sorrow.

‘I have just heard the news of Charlie,’ he writes. ‘I am afraid it has come as a most terrible and cruel blow to you both, and I would that in this moment of your agony I could by some words or thoughts repay a tithe or fraction of that which you have throughout my life given to me.

‘He indeed showed his unswerving desire to answer the call of duty which he felt cast upon him at the very first opportunity. He did not waste time in weighing the pros and cons, in thinking of self, but went straight before him to a task that he knew must prove wearisome and irksome, so much being foreign to his nature; but he went straight forward to fulfil what he believed to be his task.

‘Is this a matter of sorrow? I believe not, at least I hope and trust that this may be a source from which you may be able to find some solace and comfort, to be able to think that you have tended and cared for and guided one who was ready to give all for the sake of duty.

‘You do not know, perhaps, that part of mine and Lucy's creed is contained in Browning's Epilogue? May you be able ‘to greet the unseen with a cheer,’ and to you who believe in the life after death I trust you can find something to help you to look forward.

‘I know this is one of the very worst letters I have ever written, when you know I would give you of my best; but I want you to get this at the first possible moment, and I am afraid I have found it somewhat hard to collect and express my thoughts. My love and all my prayers come with this letter.’

A keen desire for the service of mankind. was, as it were, the bed-rock on which his life-work was built, and this thought comes out in this other letter written at a time of personal sorrow, just after Charlie's death.

In reply to a letter from Margaret he wrote: ‘I don't feel that there is much I can say in response to your letter. There is one point you touch on in which I think you take a wrong view of things, and that is in saying that you feel somewhat 'small.' But why? Surely the purpose of life is to do that which lies straight ahead of us, to serve faithfully and fully whatever one's lot may be. I suppose there are very few men who do not realise that by far the harder lot in this catastrophe is being played by those who are compelled either by sex or physical reasons to remain at home. I believe the fact that there is a risk of one's life ending before it has run its ordinary course is far more readily given if it be known that those who remain behind will not grieve and fret; and so it seems to me that you and all of you have received the news of Charlie's death in the way that he would have had it.’

The 10th battalion, that Frank was a part of, spent those summer months in the neighbourhood of Bethune, and had on the whole a fairly quiet time. However, in October he managed to get what every soldier covets, ‘a blighty’, not in action, but from one of those shells that drop from time to time all day long almost haphazard in the hope of catching somebody. A bit of the shell hit him in the arm, cutting an artery, and had it not been for the splendid first aid rendered by the Sergt.-Major he would certainly have bled to death. The wound proved to be all that could be desired, not severe enough to confine him to long months of boredom in hospital, but just severe enough to keep him in England for six months. After a very brief stay in Millbank Hospital he was sent home.

I shall never forget being in the office on the after, noon of the day on which it was known he had been wounded. One after another came in in quick succession, policemen, clients, private friends. ‘Is it true Mr. Frank's wounded? Not seriously, I hope. We can not spare him,’ and so forth, all showing with what affection he was viewed by all sections of the community. As a great friend has said: ‘He made more friends in his life than many people do who live double as long.’

Now to tell you about Pete’s part in the war. It was not to be expected that the War Office would allow a battalion to finish its training in one spot, and in the spring, with many regrets, farewell was said to Ashstead, and the usual moving about England began. Clipstone and two parts of Salisbury Plain were the scenes of their labours for the next few months, and then at last, with high hopes of speedily ending the war, they got their orders for France in November. Peter writes regularly, and his letters help us to understand in a. slight degree what life in the trenches really means. He sees very little heavy fighting, so it was. not the horrors of war that he has to bear, but what perhaps is almost worse, the deadly monotony of guarding a trench for days on end, and the many discomforts attendant on it.

As he himself once wrote, referring to Daddy Long Legs, which he had just received from England: ‘I do so heartily agree with one part in it. Do you remember where it says it's not the big troubles of life that are hard to bear, but the petty trifles of every day. It's doubly true out here. Anyone can smile in face of death. It's far harder to grin and bear it when your overcoat's wet through and weighs about sixty pounds, and your feet are so cold you don't know whether they're your own, and there's no chance of a mail for another five days.’

And another time he wrote: ‘I think if the Cabinet and the Kaiser respectively spent a week in the trenches under the same conditions as the infantry we should have a very early peace indeed.’

In another letter he described the routine of an ordinary day. ‘An hour before dawn we 'stand to' i.e. everybody turns out of their dug-outs and stands to their position in the firing-line. When it is light, and presumably we are safe from hostile attacks, we. 'stand down' and resume our occupations. The day's work starts with cleaning rifles and clearing up the trenches. This latter occupation is liable to last on and off all day. Bits of the parapet are always wanting repairing, and, of course, we have to do it. Then there are other fatigues for drawing rations and things like that, so that most of the day is fairly well occupied. Just before dark we 'stand to' again as in the morning for about an hour. After that the sentries are doubled, so that instead of having about an hour's sentry duty on and four to five hours off as in the daytime, we have an hour's sentry on and only two hours off all through the night. Besides which, jobs unsafe to do by day have to be done by night, such as mending the top of the parapet or the barbed wire. Hence the shortage of sleep.’

The normal order of procedure was four days in the trenches, four days in reserve billets; back to the trenches, and then back to rest billets for seven days. With regard to reserve billets he wrote: ‘Being in reserve billets sounds rather more comfortable than the firing line, but though it has its advantage it equally has its disadvantages. Because being in reserve you do all the dirty work for the firing-line, such as mending their parapets, clearing their trenches, and so on, to say nothing of doing odd jobs that may want doing for the Engineers, such as bringing back 180 pound gas cylinders from the firing-line-this we actually did one day. However, on the other hand, billets are more comfortable than dug-outs, so that we're about all square in the end.’

Though not in actual danger most of the time, they have a very strenuous life and experience a great many hardships. A few of them have a comic side, the picture, for instance, that he draws of sharing a dug-out four feet square with three other men, and another picture of three of them ‘trying to eat liquid porridge in the dark with a fork out of one mess tin.’

He relates nearly all his experiences with a good deal of humour, but to us who read there is more pathos than humour, and once or twice things are so hideous that he does not attempt to give them an amusing coating. There was one particularly black time when instead of being in the trenches the usual four days and then relieved they were in seventeen days at a stretch, in a very bad part of the line too, and under very hard conditions. That was just before Christmas. They moved back to rest billets, consisting of barns fitted with clean, warm straw, and in comparison with his recent experience he ‘never felt anything more like heaven.’ His Christmas letter to the family is so characteristic of him that it must be inserted at full length here:

‘December 21st.

‘A happy Christmas to you! I hope this letter will find you seated round the family board devouring the family fatted calf by large mouthfuls. (By the way, don't forget to get Jones in from his position by the drain, where he is doubtless waiting for me, and give him my share of the ancestral meal.) I should like a full-length picture of the aforesaid cat refusing to desert his post for the inducements of a paltry meal. (N .B. This might form a competition for the family to indulge in on Christmas evening.)

Well, I shall be with you in spirit if not in body. I shall feel rather like Scrooge in the company of the spirit of Christmas Past, going through the scenes of past Christmases. Or still more, perhaps, shall I accompany the spirit of Christmas Future thinking of what is to come. For the present I can see you lying in attitudes delectable if undignified round the family hearth with mouths open and eyes shut and a book on your lap, which you are pretending to read without a chance of deceiving anybody about the facts of the case.

I suppose you will have the youngest member of the family with you in the shape of Lady Betty. Kindly convey to her my most humble respects, and the hope that she will overeat herself, and thus carry on the best traditions of the British race.

Well, the whole point of writing this letter is to wish you all a happy Christmas, and having done that I won't inflict any more on you, so good-bye. Love.’

This was also the year for the Belgian refugees. Father instigated the idea of offering homes and friendship to those many Belgians who are escaping the war and have come to us for help. He and Mrs. Ernest Day are the prime movers in the scheme and we have housed many Belgians in our house until more suitable long term accommodation could be found for them.

Now for some other pieces of family and neighbourhood news.

Carrie’s husband Tom is also in the service, and is with the 8th Brigade of the Worcestershire Regiment and is serving in Italy. So of course, she is home with us, along with her little girl, Betty. We all love having Betty around. Carrie is pregnant again, so Betty will soon have a little brother or sister.

Despite the dreadful news about Charlie and all the worries about the war, there has been some excitement on Lansdowne Crescent this summer. Una Day married her sweetheart, Dick (whose real name is Francis A. D.) Richmond.

She looked lovely in her outfit, which was a white lace blouse with long sleeves and a pale blue silk skirt with tucks at the bottom. She carried a lovely bouquet of white mums. Her hat was dark blue straw trimmed with white feathers. Her bridesmaids, one of whom was Dick’s younger sister Constance, both wore pale pink dresses with navy trim on their v necks and waists, with the same style of skirt with the two tucks at the bottom. They carried baby pink roses and gypsophilia.

It was a fine day, so their whole family gathered at the back of 6 Lansdowne Crescent for the photo. Rev. George Duncan was there with his wife Marjorie and their three children Hugh, Michael and David. Muriel was there, looking pale and tired in her soft yellow outfit. Little Jan, Muriel’s oldest son, wore a sailor suit with striped stockings, and his younger brother George had a little dress on. Her third child Mark is still a tiny baby. John Duncan of course was there in his clergy gear rather than his uniform, (He is in the Warwick Regiment.) because he officiated at the wedding, with Rev. George Duncan assisting. May, John’s wife, wore a pretty pale blue dress with a white colour. It had ruffles on the hem and also on the shoulders. Her hat was yellow straw with blue and yellow flowers on it. Young Tom who is eight was dressed up too, as he helped at the altar. He had a long dress and coat and hat on.

Caroline looked very smart in her grey suit with her black straw hat with one flower on it. J.C.R. Day looked dignified in full morning dress, with a flower in his lapel, as father of the bride. Of course the men were mostly in uniform – Dick the groom, Mark, Harold. Bobs can not wait until he is old enough to enlist. He would much rather have been wearing a uniform than his dress suit with his boutonnière as the usher. Dick’s parents were there too, of course, his father also a clergyman. His mother wore a fur around her neck, over her brown suit, with a lilac high necked blouse. Her hat was big and fussy with brown netting over the yellow straw. She wore her glasses on a strap around her wrist.

My brother-in-law, Tom Stinton’s battalion –is the 1/8 division of the Worcester Brigade, and in March they landed at Boulogne and proceeded to the Western Front.

When Mark Day and his friend Arthur Best (whom everyone calls Hippo, not because he is big now, but apparently he was as a baby) they had some time off and went to visit Hippo’s brother Walter (who is really Charles Walter), who was not fit for active service, and his wife Bessie were staying at Great Skipping, near Newark. Also at the house was a beautiful girl, Hippo’s sister, Gwenllian, who is just 18, and Mark is much smitten. Not long after, he went to the Brecon Beacons to visit her family and Mark and Gwenllian made a visit to Brecon Castle, and the result is they are now engaged. But they plan to wait til the end of the war to be married. Gwenllian has one sister, Dorothy who is 10 years older than she is, but unmarried and living at home.

Hippo’s two other brothers are also fighting in the war, but not in the Royal Engineers, like Mark and Hippo, but in the South Wales Borders. They are called Stephen and Frank. It is interesting that they have 3 brothers fighting as we did in our family, and the Days have four, with young Bobs getting in to the Officer Training Corps so he will be ready as soon as he is old enough. I wonder how many more will follow Charlie to an unmarked grave.