I have used a number of extracts from Henry Williamson’s books, throughout the site. The following is a brief overview of his time in the army from the book ‘A Patriot’s Progress’ written by his daughter-in-law, Anne Williamson.

Henry Williamson is probably most popularly known as the author of ‘Tarka the Otter’.  He also wrote a novel in fifteen volumes, ‘A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight’, in which the hero, Phillip Maddison, is based on himself. Five of the novels cover his experience in the war. Unfortunately I have so far found it impossible to buy all five that deal with the war. I have the first, the fourth & the fifth of this set; they are ‘How dear is life’, ‘Love and the Loveless’ & ‘A test to destruction’. The second and third in the series are ‘A fox under my cloak’ & ‘The golden Virgin’.  I’ll keep looking.  An excellent true account of his life is ‘A Patriots Progress’, which is based on his diaries, and edited by his daughter-in-law, Anne Williamson.

Henry Williamson (HW) was the son of a bank clerk, and had a typical Victorian middle-class upbringing, and he was frightened of his father “..who, by all accounts, was what we understand to be a typically stern and withdrawn Victorian man.” In his books HW wrote fictionally of the war although he did base his main character, Phillip, on much of his own experience and placed him in the battles he describes.  Phillip does not only take part in actions or areas where HW was involved, but also other major events in the war. At the 1915 Battle of Loos Phillip is a gas officer, and he also takes part in the offensive on the first day of the Somme, 1st July 1916.  The book, ‘A Patriots Progress’ is made up of extracts from HW’s diary, Field Message book and letters, mostly to his mother.  They give an interesting picture of a young man in the war, especially those written when he was an officer.

HW enlisted into the Territorial section of the London Rifle Brigade in January, 1914, as Private 9689 and was mobilized with the regiment when war was declared on the 5th August.  He served in the front line and witnessed the Christmas Truce.

In 1915 HW was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, and went on to serve as a Transport Officer with the Machine Gun Corps.  For anyone interested in the war in the trenches, I can strongly recommend his novels, and the account from his diaries.

HW’s letters to his mother are fascinating for the picture they paint of someone who is quite young, he joins at 18 years and 8 months, and almost comes across as a ‘senior boy’ in a public school. His letters to his mother are quite hectoring, “ I wish you would write neatly in ink, I don’t like a scribbled letter.” He scolds her for not taking sufficient notice of his requests and when as an officer he has to censor the letters of his men, he is not above putting in his letters the very things he would discipline the men for including in theirs. On the 1 April ‘17 he says that Driver Wishart “must not mention...they are in tents near a village that has just been evacuated by the enemy, as this might give a hint to the sector the Division is fighting in.”  However, on the same day in a letter home he uses his own code to give his family the start date for the Battle of the Scarpe, 9 April 1917; “...you will probably read the advert in the paper about Apr. 10 or evening of the 9th.”

His letters also give an interesting insight to the conditions they lived in, and his views on people at home and his own progress in his job as an officer. It is also interesting to see how much of his letters are given over to arranging shipments from home of ‘extras’ like tobacco, but also shipments home from him of what might be called ‘booty’ and mementos.  In October 1914 he is put out that he has not received an oil lamp he requested to use in the tent “...We have to burn candles, so a little oil lamp would be a blessing.  Still, as you are uninclined to get one as I particularly asked you, perhaps I had better write to other people for it.”

Having arrived in France he is witness to some of the Xmas Truce incidents in the trenches at the end of 1914; “On Xmas Eve both armies sang carols and cheered and there was very little firing.”   HW was surprised when he realized that the Germans also believed that they were fighting ‘with God on their side’. Conditions in the trenches were ideal for men to go sick with various illnesses and in late January ‘15 HW was sent back to England suffering from enteritis with dysentery and trench foot and when he arrived home he wrote an article for his old school magazine in which he described the mud at the front.  “The chief trouble is the mud.  We sleep on mud, we freeze on mud, we get mud on our rifles, on our clothes, in our hair, in our food.” While at home he applied for a commission and was successful and joined the 10th Battalion, the Bedfordshires.

HW did not find it easy to be accepted in the Officers Mess, he had difficulty adjusting to Officer status and would have problems in the position until he left the army.  Having spent time at the front he found much of the training he was given to be unrealistic for the conditions at the front, and he said so. Williamson would spend a lot of time after receiving his commission in training, but also sick but in February of 1917 he was in France with 208 Machine Gun Company as a Transport Officer.

Mail from home was important to those at the front, and HW was no exception. In a letter to his mother on 12 March 1917; “...I ain’t had a letter from anyone since I’ve been out...” But as well as letters, they also enjoyed a drink whenever they could get one, “Went to dinner with Canadians. All got tight.”  He is quite pleased with himself for the things he sends home, German helmets and even grenades with the explosives removed, he also has a ‘Boche watch’, and all through his letters he is using his own code system to indicate to his parents where he is and also the dates when he expects attacks to take place. On the other hand, as the officer responsible for censoring his men’s letters he is constantly reminding them of the disciplinary action they would face if they were to give away any of these details in their letters. Again, one is minded of senior prefects laying down school rules while feeling they do not apply to the Prefects Common Room.

We are used to seeing pictures of the front with mud everywhere but in a letter home in March he gives a rather more comfortable picture of their existence; “We are not far from the Bosche position...... I have a bon little shelter with a Bosche stove in it...my hut is built into a bank and is 6 feet by 8 feet by 5 ft high ..... I have my camp bed in it and change into pyjamas every night .... rise at 9 have breakfast in a good hut erected by carpenters, good food, bacon, sausages etc etc & good tables & tablecloths & we have a French chef named Carny who is Offrs mess cook...” A little different to our normal picture!  But in the midst of everything HW still had to attend to the discipline of the troops; “There is a slackness among the drivers in saluting of officers. If this is not immediately improved extra parades will be held to smarten the men up.”

What must have been a very frightening time for anyone in the trenches, ‘going over the top’, is almost only mentioned in passing in a letter of the 3rd May before the battle at Bullecourt; “Am just going over the top, so will write a hasty note. Give my love to Mother.  The Ger (sic) is putting an awfull barrage up - the day is just breaking. We are over in 20 minutes.  Am just having a cup of tea before rejoining the men who are lined up waiting for the artillery to open, it does in 7 minutes.  Well Cheerio.”  But for most of the men in France battles, or other action, was the exception, most of their time was taken up with routine duty and HW’s Army Correspondence Book for the 6th May ‘17 shows an example of the routine in the Transport section.  “6am Reveille.  6.15 Grooming.  Stables.  7 Watering. 7.30 Feeding.  8.45 Parade - cleaning lines, grooming etc. 10.45 Break. 11 Watering. 11.30 Grooming.  12.30 Feeding.  2pm Harness Cleaning.  4pm Watering. 4.30 Feeding.  7.30 Hay.”

At various places on the site I gave used poems written by soldiers, many of them died soon after, it is maybe a measure of the human spirit and the possibility to still see beyond the physical side of war that is demonstrated by the poems these men wrote in these dreadful circumstances.  Williamson himself showed an example of this in a letter to his mother in April of ‘17 where he contrasted the coming Spring in England and at the Front; “ I ‘spose the blue-tits still sing as they search the newly opening buds for insects? and the pigeons still fly with a clatter of wings through the beech trees in the Park...... Nature is unchanged in England.

Here the earth will soon vibrate with the thunder of the guns - tons of earth will be blown skyhigh in huge black fountains - the shrapnel will burst in white soft clouds above the wire - Hell itself will be let loose, and soon the beauty of the spring will disappear, and shattered trees and torn earth alone be left - and among it, pathetic little bundles of wasting flesh will strew the ground.”

The strange and unreal world of the front is also captured in a short diary entry for the 14 May, 1917; “Taking rations to Bullecourt tonight. Shelled a bit and about 200 phosgene gas shells sent over. Found magpie’s nest in bush near front line.”  But by now the war and the time in France was starting to get to HW; “Thank God I’m a transport officer and don’t go up again to the awful slaughter they call our front line...”

In May of 1917 HW was told that he would be attending a 6 week signalling course, and though he knew nothing about the subject, he was looking forward to it, ‘Damn nice crowd here - evidently in for a tophole time.” Unfortunately he does not make the 6 weeks, he is taken off the course; “Dear Mater, Have been chucked out of the course as I know damn all about signalling...”  By the beginning of June HW is suffering from the effects of gas inhalation, and is wanting ‘out’.

In letters to his father on the 3rd and his mother on the 4th of June he expresses his view on his own emotional state. “....I am fed up to the back teeth with the war. Well father after 4 months of continuous warfare on the Ancre....I am really fagged out.  .....the nervous strain is too much. You would be surprised how awful it is to go 6 miles up & 6 miles down the line every night - right up to the gun positions - shelled like hell all the way - stinking horses, broken limbers, gaping shell pitted roads - urgh, I am tired of it all...”  And then on the 4th June; “All I can tell you about myself is that I am very unwell - having been in a considerable period up the line while the Bosche was sending over Phosgene gas - I got quite a lot of it - and my insides generally done in & done up - those long sweats up the line night after night, usually through hellish shelling and dead horses and gas etc have just about fed me up.”  As a result HW was sent back to convalesce in England, and he was beginning to express the view that the war would be over that year, “The war will be over this year: there are all the signs of an imminent collapse on the Bosche’s part - look - he lost one of the strongest positions in this war at Messines Ridge and nothing can withstand our artillery. The Bosche is demoralise.” Unfortunately HW was wrong and the war went on.

Henry Williamson left the army on the 19th September, 1919, by then he was 24 years old. Like many of his generation he had joined young, not much more that a late school leaver, but by the time that he left he had experienced all the horrors of a dreadful war. His diaries, letters and books give a flavour of the way HW and his generation ‘grew up’ in France, but they also show the amazing extremes they came to cope with. On the 22 May ‘17 he is reminding his mother of the periodicals he wants her to send “...don’t forget...Kentish Mercury every week & M(otor) Cycle & M(otor) Cycling” while the next day his diary has the entry “Poor old Tremlett killed last night.”

Do read his books, they are well worth it.