A Broken World Page 4

  I feel I cannot write any more just now, it distresses me too much. My darling babe who I have lost was my only child and all the world to me. Since she has been taken from me in such a cruel way my whole life seems different. I loved her so much and at times I feel I cannot go on living without her. I know too what you must be suffering and my heart goes out in sympathy for you. I have written this letter as bereaved Mother to bereaved Mother and am sure you will understand.

  Must now close, my deepest sympathy to you and yours

  believe me to remain

  Your sincerely

  Lilian Pye

  Renton

  10.9.15

  Dear Mrs Pritchard [sic]

  Received your letter this morning and on opening the leaflet I recognised your son in a moment.

  Many times I have thought of him and wondered if he had been saved. He sat directly opposite me at the table and I noticed the dimple you refer to in your description of him. I can see his face so clearly in my mind so sunburned and full of life and ambition. He kept us in good spirits relating different experiences he had during his travels and was very nice to everybody. I appreciated his efforts as I was very sick during the whole journey and [he] was especially nice to me. Well the eventful Friday arrived and in the course of conversation Mr Pritchard remarked that I had a double on board and that he had spoken to this girl mistaking her for me. One or two of the other men at the table it seems did the same thing. So Mr Pritchard volunteered to point her out to me after lunch. I agreed and went down for my hat and coat. We went up on deck and was looking around when the awful crash came. The ship listed so much that we all scrambled down the deck and for a moment everything was confusion. When I came to myself again I glanced around but could find no trace of Mr Pritchard. He seemed to have disappeared. I ran around the deck looking for a life belt but could not get one. I then ran along to the first class deck to try the life boats there when the second torpedo struck her. I felt all hope was gone as far as the boats were concerned she was sinking so rapidly so ran back to my place where I was standing when she was first struck took off my heavy coat and climbed over the rail and jumped into the water with the hope of catching hold of a piece of wreckage[.] The suction pulled me down and I felt that I was going to my death but fortune came my way and I rose to the surface this time caught a small piece of wood and floated with it until I was picked up by a collapsible life boat and eight hours after was landed, at Queenstown. On Saturday morning I made inquiries regarding Mr Pritchard from one or two persons that knew him but could not gain any news of him at all.

  I had the hope that perhaps he had been saved and brought to some other place. Several times I have mentioned in my home about Mr Pritchard taking me to see my double and how sadly it all ended. You have my heartfelt sympathy in your sorrow. People have forgotten about it but only those who had loved ones on board the Lusitania will never forget it. Time alone will efface the horror of the cruel deed.

  Trusting these few lines will be of some use to you coming from one who probably was the last to speak to your son on the Lusitania.

  Yours Sincerely

  Grace Hope French

  P.S. There was another girl at our table who was also saved I don’t remember her name but I asked her at Queenstown if she saw anything of your son but she did not. Also one other man a Mr Bilborough he is in the Canadian [word unclear] now. I don’t think he knew anything of him either.

  There was another Canadian a very dyspeptic sort of fellow who sat next to Mr Pritchard. If I remember rightly I asked him too but he didn’t know anything either. A Mrs Middlemast was also in our company she sat several seats down from us. She came all the way to Liverpool with the party I was with. She was with Mr Bilborough when the disaster happened so do not think she will know anything.

  I hope you will gain some little satisfaction out of this rather badly written letter. I should also like to have the leaflet if you have one to spare in memory of Mr Pritchard.

  Grace H. French

  11th Sept 1915

  Dear Mrs Prichard,

  I am very pleased to be able to tell you a little about your son.

  I remembered his face as soon as I saw his photograph. I saw him many times on deck, but only spoke to him once & that was only for a few minutes. A party of us used to have a game of skipping everyday. One of the boys tried to lasso me, the day before we were torpedoed, but did not manage to do it very well so this young gentleman, your son, had been watching us, came forward & said, I will show you how to do it. He seemed to be an expert at lassoing & caught quite a few in the rope, when he handed me the rope back he remarked that he had lassoed before. I never saw him again after this.

  I was having lunch when the torpedo hit us. 70 D. deck was I think on the same floor, we had time to get onto the boat deck, even though the boat was tilted at such an angle, by pulling ourselves up the banisters, having to go up 6 flights of stairs. If your son were in his cabin he would have time to get on deck. I was taken out of the water & put onto an upturned boat, & afterwards taken out to a collapsible boat. I was not in Mr Parry’s nor Mr Morton’s boat & did not see anyone with a life belt on like you mention.

  Sorry I can’t tell you anything more about your son. My heart goes out to you, in your great loss. Oh it is just terrible to think about!!!

  I will enclose address of some of our rescued party – Hoping you will hear more of your loved one.

  Yours very sincerely

  Olive North.

  SERGEANT E. COOPER, VC was in the 12th Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps. This extract was taken from documents and recordings made by the historian Lyn Macdonald and reproduced in 1914–1918: Voices and Images of the Great War (1988).

  I’d never been home for 16 months and my leave came through and it was usual for the men to go back with the Transport Sergeant when he delivered the rations and the mail. Well, I knew the ground fairly well, so I said to the Sergeant, ‘I’m not going to wait for you, I’m going cross-country.’ Well, in the meantime, in that very mail he was taking up, there was a notification that I had been awarded the Victoria Cross. It was to appear in Battalion Orders the next morning.

  I sent a telegram to my parents to tell them I’m in England and would be home this evening. Outside King’s Cross station, there was a YMCA hut so I went in there, had my bun and a cup of tea. I knocked a newspaper on to the floor. As it fell, it opened out. I stooped down to pick it up and I saw the big heading, Eleven new VCs. I was in this list!

  The first thing that flashed through my mind was, ‘What a surprise I’ll give my mother when I get home tonight and tell her I’ve won the VC.’

  Of course, in the meantime, my parents had got to know that I’d won the Victoria Cross, so, of course, when they knew I was in England, they told Mrs Smith next door and Mrs Jones further up the street and before long everyone in Stockton knew that I was home and they put it on the screen in the pictures that I was coming on the train that evening and when I got home, of course, everybody knew.

  At Darlington, I had to change, I had to dash for the train to Stockton, haring along the platform, and somebody threw their arms around me. It was my father! I said, ‘Come on, Dad, let’s get the train.’ It was packed with troops of course. I was sat in one corner and my father in the other and he said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ I said, ‘Tell you what, Father?’ He said, ‘You know.’ I said,‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He couldn’t contain himself any longer. He said, in front of all the others, ‘This is my son and he’s won the VC.’ The papers in London had told the local press in Stockton that there was a VC in The London Gazette and, of course, they’d looked up all the Coopers. They found the address and knocked and my mother answered the door. They said, ‘You have a son, Sergeant Cooper?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘King’s Royal Rifles?’ ‘Yes.’ And, of course, she began to worry then, thinking it was bad news, and she let out a little cry. My sister went to the door and wondered what they were doing
, upsetting my mother, and they said, ‘We’ve got good news for you Mrs Cooper and you’ve got nothing to worry about. Your son’s got the VC.’ She didn’t know what the VC was! When my father came home for his midday meal, they told him what had happened and he didn’t go back to work that day. I think it was the first day he’d ever missed half a day’s work in his life. So he’d set off to meet me at Darlington.

  When we got to Stockton station, I was first out of that train and dashed down the subway and there was a Superintendent of Police racing after me. ‘Stop!’

  I said, ‘What’s the matter?’

  He said, ‘The Borough Corporation are here to give you an address of welcome.’

  I said, ‘I don’t want it. I want to get home to my mother.’

  They threw the station doors open and of course all the crowd came in and they picked me up and carried me away and that was my homecoming. I was 21. I’d only seen my mother once since I went to France.

  […]

  People said, ‘Now you must wear a ribbon.’ There was a sports shop that sold sporting guns etc. and I said to the lady behind the counter ‘Have you any medal ribbons?’ ‘Oh, yes. What did you require?’ I said, ‘The Victoria Cross.’ After recovering, she said, ‘Well we haven’t any of that ribbon in, but I can get it for you.’

  Sure enough, on the Wednesday, it was there. The lady said, ‘Let me be the first to put it on your breast.’ Well, I just stood in front of her and she put it on the right-hand side! Further down the High Street, there was a little photographer. He was stood on the doorstep of his shop and he persuaded me to go in and have my photo taken and so I’ve got a photo with the VC ribbon on the wrong side!

  HELEN THOMAS (1877–1967) was born in Lancashire, and is perhaps best known for the autobiographical accounts of her relationship with the poet Edward Thomas, whom she married in 1899. Edward was killed at Arras on 9 April 1917. In the 1931 edition of World Without End from which the excerpt below is taken, some names are changed and Edward is referred to as David.

  Christmas had come and gone. The snow still lay deep under the forest trees, which, tortured by the merciless wind, moaned and swayed as if in exhausted agony. The sky, day after day, was grey with snow that fell often enough to keep the surface white, and to cover again and again the bits of twigs, and sometimes large branches that broke from the heavily laden trees. We wearied for some colour, some warmth, some sound, but desolation and despair seemed to have taken up her dwelling place on the earth, as in our hearts she had entered, do what we would to keep her out. I longed with a passionate longing for some sign of life, of hope, of spring, but none came, and I knew at last none would come.

  The last two days of David’s leave had come. Two days and two nights more we were to be together, and I prayed in my heart, ‘Oh, let the snow melt and the sky be blue again!’ so that the dread which was spoiling these precious hours would lift.

  The first days had been busy with friends coming to say good-bye, all bringing presents for David to take out to the front – warm lined gloves, a fountain pen, a box of favourite sweets, books.

  This was not a time when words of affection were bearable; so they heaped things that they thought he might need or would like. Everyone who came was full of fun and joking about his being an officer after having had, as it were, to go to school again and learn mathematics, which were so uncongenial to him, but which he had stuck to and mastered with that strange pertinacity that had made him stick to all sorts of unlikely and uncongenial things in his life. They joked about his short hair, and the little moustache he had grown, and about the way he had perfected the Guards’ salute. We got large jugs of beer from the inn near by to drink his health in, and an end to the War. The hateful cottage became homely and comfortable under the influence of these friends, all so kind and cheerful.

  Then in the evenings, when just outside the door the silence of the forest was like a pall covering too heavily the myriads of birds and little beasts that the frost had killed, we would sit by the fire with the children and read aloud to them, and they would sing songs that they had known since their baby-hood, and David sang new ones he had learnt in the army – jolly songs with good choruses in which I, too, joined as I busied about getting the supper. Then, when the baby had gone to bed, Elizabeth would sit on his lap, content just to be there, while he and Philip worked out problems or studied maps. It was lovely to see those two so united over this common interest.

  But he and I were separated by our dread, and we could not look each other in the eyes, nor dared we be left alone together.

  The days had passed in restless energy for us both. He had sawn up a big tree that had been blown down at our very door, and chopped the branches into logs, the children all helping. The children loved being with him, for though he was stern in making them build up the logs properly, and use the tools in the right way, they were not resentful of this, but tried to win his rare praise and imitate his skill. Indoors he packed his kit and polished his accoutrements. He loved a good piece of leather, and his Sam Browne and high trench boots shone with a deep clear lustre. The brass, too, reminded him of the brass ornaments we had often admired when years ago we had lived on a farm and knew every detail of a plough team’s harness. We all helped with the buttons and buckles and badges to turn him out the smart officer it was his pride to be. For he entered into this soldiering which he hated in just the same spirit of thoroughness of which I have spoken before. We talked, as we polished, of those past days: ‘Do you remember when Jingo, the grey leader of the team, had colic, and Turner the ploughman led her about Blooming Meadow for hours, his eyes streaming with tears because he thought she was going to die? And how she would only eat the hay from the Blooming Meadow, and not the coarse hay that was grown in Sixteen Acre Meadow for the cows? And do you remember Turner’s whip which he carried over his shoulder when he led Darling and Chestnut and Jingo out to the plough? It had fourteen brass bands on the handle, one for every year of his service on the farm.’ So we talked of old times that the children could remember.

  And the days went by till only two were left. David had been going through drawers full of letters, tearing up dozens and keeping just one here and there, and arranging manuscripts and note-books and newspaper cuttings all neatly in his desk – his face pale and suffering while he whistled. The children helped and collected stamps from the envelopes, and from the drawers all sorts of useless odds and ends that children love. Philip knew what it all meant, and looked anxiously and dumbly from his father’s face to mine.

  And I knew David’s agony and he knew mine, and all we could do was to speak sharply to each other. ‘Now do, for goodness’ sake, remember, Jenny, that these are the important manuscripts, and that I’m putting them here, and this key is for the box that holds all important papers like our marriage certificate and the children’s birth certificates, and my life insurance policy. You may want them at some time; so don’t go leaving the key about.’ And I, after a while, ‘Can’t you leave all this unnecessary tidying business, and put up that shelf you promised me? I hate this room, but a few books on a shelf might make it look a bit more human.’ ‘Nothing will improve this room; so you had better resign yourself to it. Besides, the wall is too rotten for a shelf.’ ‘Oh, but you promised.’ ‘Well, it won’t be the first time I’ve broken a promise to you, will it? Nor the last, perhaps.’

  Oh, God! melt the snow and let the sky be blue.

  The last evening comes. The children have taken down the holly and mistletoe and ivy, and chopped up the little Christmas-tree to burn. And for a treat Elizabeth and Polly are to have their bath in front of the blazing fire. The big zinc bath is dragged in, and the children undress in high glee, and skip about naked in the warm room, which is soon filled with the sweet smell of the burning greenery. The berries pop, and the fir-tree makes fairy lace, and the holly crackles and roars. The two children get into the bath together, and David scrubs them in turn – they laughing, making the fire hiss w
ith their splashing. The drawn curtains shut out the snow and the starless sky, and the deathly silence out there in the biting cold is forgotten in the noise and warmth of our little room. After the bath David reads to them. First of all he reads Shelley’s The Question and Chevy Chase, and then for Polly a favourite Norse tale. They sit in their nightgowns listening gravely, and then, just before they kiss him good-night, while I stand by with the candle in my hand, he says: ‘Remember while I am away to be kind. Be kind, first of all, to Mummy, and after that be kind to everyone and everything.’ And they all assent together, and joyfully hug and kiss him, and he carries the two girls up, and drops each into her bed.

  And we are left alone, unable to hide our agony, afraid to show it. Over supper, we talk of the probable front he’ll arrive at, of his fellow-officers, and of the unfinished portrait-etching that one of them has done of him and given to me. And we speak of the garden, and where this year he wants the potatoes to be, and he reminds me to put in the beans directly the snow disappears. ‘If I’m not back in time, you’d better get someone to help you with the digging,’ he says. He reads me some of the poems he has written that I have not heard – the last one of all called Out in the Dark. And I venture to question one line, and he says, ‘Oh, no, it’s right, Jenny, I’m sure it’s right.’ And I nod because I can’t speak, and I try to smile at his assurance.

  I sit and stare stupidly at his luggage by the wall, and his roll of bedding, kit-bag, and suit-case. He takes out his prismatic compass and explains it to me, but I cannot see, and when a tear drops on to it he just shuts it up and puts it away. Then he says, as he takes a book out of his pocket, ‘You see, your Shakespeare’s Sonnets is already where it will always be. Shall I read you some?’ He reads one or two to me. His face is grey and his mouth trembles, but his voice is quiet and steady. And soon I slip to the floor and sit between his knees, and while he reads his hand falls over my shoulder and I hold it with mine.