5,741
edits
Dunhill: Difference between revisions
→Alfred Henry Dunhill
No edit summary |
|||
| Line 408: | Line 408: | ||
<blockquote><q>Alfred Henry, who was just over eighteen when war was declared, came home one day in the summer of 1914 in the uniform of a Private in the Queen's Royal Regiment. I remember that the tunic was much too short for his lanky body and that, before he kissed me goodbye, he showed me how he wound on his puttees. We didn’t see him again until he returned on leave after several weeks in the front-line trenches without once having the chance of taking his boots off. I screamed when he showed us the lice wriggling in the seams of that tunic with its short sleeves. Mother, I remember, made him strip in the garden, taking the uniform into the kitchen where she baked it in the oven.<br> | <blockquote><q>Alfred Henry, who was just over eighteen when war was declared, came home one day in the summer of 1914 in the uniform of a Private in the Queen's Royal Regiment. I remember that the tunic was much too short for his lanky body and that, before he kissed me goodbye, he showed me how he wound on his puttees. We didn’t see him again until he returned on leave after several weeks in the front-line trenches without once having the chance of taking his boots off. I screamed when he showed us the lice wriggling in the seams of that tunic with its short sleeves. Mother, I remember, made him strip in the garden, taking the uniform into the kitchen where she baked it in the oven.<br> | ||
The telegram from the War Office Mother had been dreading for four years arrived on Armistice Day. Alfred Henry had been wounded and was being brought back to Bethnal Green where a workhouse had been converted into an emergency hospital. Mother and I dashed off in silent terror, but we found him in reasonable spirits, surrounded by soldiers in their hospital blue, pale and tired and obviously glad to be home. He had nothing worse than a burst of shrapnel in one of his legs, though they failed to get all of it out and the wound was to trouble him for the rest of his life. Then, as soon as he was fit enough to limp about on a stick, Father, with his customary thoroughness, organized a festive dance to welcome my brother home. | |||
On his next leave Alfred Henry returned with a Sam Browne belt and the shoulder badges of a Captain who, apparently, for such was the death toll, had already had to act as Colonel. According to the hilarious story he made of it, he had had to parade on a spritely horse during a marchpast of his battalion after spending no more than a couple of hours in the saddle. Never a word about the mud, the rats, the deprivations, the terrifying bombardments and the unimaginable butchery of the Western Front. Like thousands of other boys who had gone to the front, Alfred Henry was one of those who returned with the face of a man who never spoke of what he had seen and felt.</q> Dunhill, Mary. Our Family Business (The Bodley Head - Great Britain, 1979).</blockquote> | On his next leave Alfred Henry returned with a Sam Browne belt and the shoulder badges of a Captain who, apparently, for such was the death toll, had already had to act as Colonel. According to the hilarious story he made of it, he had had to parade on a spritely horse during a marchpast of his battalion after spending no more than a couple of hours in the saddle. Never a word about the mud, the rats, the deprivations, the terrifying bombardments and the unimaginable butchery of the Western Front. Like thousands of other boys who had gone to the front, Alfred Henry was one of those who returned with the face of a man who never spoke of what he had seen and felt.</q> Dunhill, Mary. Our Family Business (The Bodley Head - Great Britain, 1979).</blockquote> | ||