#Courcelette

[theworldofwars]

Medical orderlies tend to the wounded in a trench during the Battle of Courcelette in mid-September 1916. The medical orderlies wear non-combatant red cross armbands. The man on the bottom left is commonly referred to as a "Shell Shock" victim.

[gogandmagog]

I just want you to know that the Thematic Implications of Ken Ford dying in WWI instead of Walter lives in my brain now. The way it would so subtly change the story! That being the Hero won't save you, that being the Heroine doesn't mean you get your prize at the end, that "the white flame of sacrifice" doesn't mean you will get to be the sacrificial lamb--that the sensitive genius will have to live with the horrors anyway. Rilla being the symbol of all those girls who were left without sweethearts instead of Una--who might instead by a symbol of all those girls who found their sweethearts irrevocably changed. Obsessed.

SO WELL SAID, @sparrowsarus!!!!   VERY MUCH. All of this, very much.     Obviously, I understand why it had to be a Blythe, for the simple fact that it cuts the reader ever so much deeper than the converse option of losing the very negligible Ken Ford... Walter is a loss that stings everyone, because we are so profoundly attached to him, and if not to him, then to his family. What hurts them hurts us. But everything you say does feel thematically more attractive to the after-shocks message underlying in the story, because of the occasional inference to the still-coming uphill battle of post-war recovery. Maud can be quoted as personally saying, “If ever peace comes again, we will not know how to live in it.” And really, I think of Rilla were to have ever to’ve had a sequel, this thought, together with what you’ve outlined would’ve been far more realistic to grapple with. Rilla’s ending, as it stands, is rooted in an idealistic ‘return’ to innocence, as we see demonstrated with the coinciding return of her childhood lisp... but to me it’s also another semi-contrived signature fairytale ending that we often see in LMM’s classic wrap-up scenes. And for me, this is the only time I actually do clock her classic quick wrap-up as contrived. Usually, I fully recognise that her books were meant for children; that she herself calls them fairytales, and states that the rules laid out in her books would never work in real life. That the natural adult world and the natural adult questions that come with them, don’t have a place or belong in these fairytales. Kids have an effortless trust in happy-ever-afters that grownups struggle with. But Rilla spent so long being seeped in harsh reality, and the pain of a very ugly War... that really, if not for x-ray vision we get from TBAQ that shows us the Blythe’s (and Una’s!) residual struggle, the ending Rilla got would almost feel unequal to the pain in its pages.

The sensitive genius having to live with the horrors anyway? Could’ve been an even stronger message of hope and resilience, in some ways. Learning the hard parts of Keeping the Faith. Faith put to the test, faith contending with survivors guilt.

Rilla, in Una’s spot, though! I kind of waffle with the idea of her as being a lifelong leftover sweetheart, the way Una is. Right before Ken comes back, Rilla’s coolly resigned herself to the notion of him never coming back for her, and in the very next moment shrugs it off and has decided to go to Redmond after all, lol. 😅 Of course she would’ve had an appropriate period of mourning for Ken, but I honestly think she would’ve married someone else, in the years following.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Battle of Flers-Courcelette. Reinforcements (possibly from a NZ division) crossing the old German front line during the advance towards Flers, 15 September 1916.

[jomiddlemarch]

Dawn was theirs

It was a glorious English autumn day when the Courcelette survivors arrived at Downton. Sybil wasn’t certain any of the men could appreciate the brilliance of the light falling across the green fields, gilding the towers, the ruddy leaves of the oaks along the winding drive. Four of the men were insensible, two had grubby bandages wrapped around their eyes, long overdue for changing, and the last, young, slender, dark-haired, gazed at something beyond any comprehension, murmuring all this is ended as if it were a nun’s litany.

Walter Blythe remained unconscious for four days.

*

Matthew had turned his face to the wall when Mary approached, wept when he thought no one would notice. He was very polite, very cold, bitter, a fallen angel. Mary stood in the hall and wrung her hands before she came into the room where he lay, her heartbreak in the shadow of her dark eyes, the trembling palm she pressed against her breast. Sybil hadn’t thought any other soldier would pose as great a challenge, for they had all known Matthew before he went off to war and he was precious to them, even to Granny, who’d never admit it but still visited and sat with him for the fifteen minutes expected of a social call.

Walter Blythe, burned, broken, his face spared, seemed unreachable. One of the other men had been in his company and spoke highly of him, describing a man uncomplaining, steady, a doctor’s son who wasn’t at all squeamish about lice or dysentery. Then he shocked them by telling them Walter was a poet, the renowned author of “The Piper,” one of Canada’s most honored sons.

Walter had been mute for a fortnight after he’d opened his eyes.

* 

Sybil tried, but she’d couldn’t conceal the fact that Walter was a favorite of hers. She lingered by his bed, eager to fetch him a book from the library, the paper, a fresh cup of tea. He was easy to be fond of him and if doting by the nursing staff were enough to heal a man, he’d have been up and sent back to the Front in a week.

“It’s because I have sisters,” he said, he told her, when she admitted to him that she was idling and he didn’t truly need his pillows plumped yet again. “You’d like them, Di especially. She’s determined to become a VAD though what she really wants is to become a doctor like Dad.”

He was like that, Walter Blythe, charming and well-spoken, sharing bits of his life before the War, always wholesome and cheerful, making it seem to the nurses that he was unchanged from the man who’d set off from the Glen. The other patients enjoyed listening. It was a respite from the pain and boredom of recoveries that would only ever be incomplete.

He fooled everyone but Thomas Barrow.

*

Thomas watched Walter when no one else was looking. 

At rest, if there was such a thing, Walter’s face had an expression of blank horror, as if he looked into an abyss seething with the most monstrous visions, agony and annihilation. He pressed his lips together to keep from calling out, screaming, though not for help, for Thomas could see Walter believed he was beyond any assistance, befouled in a way that could never be made clean.

He shied away from the touch of any of the nurses, Sybil most especially, though he forced himself to be tended.

He ate little, crumbling rolls with his barely functional left hand, the right still bandaged. It wasn’t clear if another surgery would restore even the least function there, old Clarkson preferring to wait and see how Walter did overall, putting on weight, expressing any interest in getting out of the ward they’d made of a drawing room.

He liked music, better if it came from another room. He’d finish his cup of tea if Thomas stirred in another lump of sugar but left it black. He frowned whenever anyone mentioned his famous poem and never asked for the journal and pencil Sybil brought when she discovered he was a writer. He didn’t hate the Germans, never called them Huns.

He never wanted to re-read the letters he was sent from home.

*

Thomas didn’t exactly hang about, but he knew how to be present when he was needed. It was a skill that had helped him advance in service, though Carson frequently gave him his version of a dirty look if he noticed him lurking in a manner unbecoming an under-butler. 

Thomas wore his uniform, was caring for sick men, doing the heavy work that only the oldest and toughest of the nurses undertook. 

He ignored Carson. 

He paid attention to Walter.

The man had turned Sybil away when she offered to write another letter home for him, to his younger sister or his mother. Walter had smiled and thanked her and declined, with such grace Sybil walked away glowing, as if he’d granted her dearest wish.

Thomas knew this was his time to come round. That Walter would want to talk but only to someone who could understand.

"She writes a fair hand," Walter said, his voice rough, the words picked out slowly, his grey eyes trained on the man in front of him. The letter in his hand was a distant afterthought. "But they won't be satisfied until it's me writing them, Barrow. They won't ever be satisfied."

He began to turn his face away when Thomas spoke.

“No, I don’t suppose they ever will be. But you might be, Blythe. You might.”

*

“Not much like home,” Thomas said. He’d wheeled Walter out to the gardens, the prospect of fresh air alleged to tempt the men back to health. He’d not seen it make much difference and Nichols had wept and screamed to be brought back inside, but Mrs. Crawley kept fussing about it and he’d welcomed the chance for some conversation that couldn’t be overheard by a nurse or Carson. Walter had acquiesced because he did that and because Thomas had volunteered to manage his chair.

Now they sat together in the sunshine, a blanket over Walter’s lap, the sky a perfect blue. An idyll of a sort. Their sort.

“Not very. Beautiful but not like the Glen. Nor Rainbow Valley,” he said. 

“What’s Rainbow Valley?” Thomas asked. Once he would have sounded snide or mocking but today, Walter looking across the manicured grounds, something almost like a smile on his lips, Thomas only wanted to hear more.

“The woods behind Ingleside. Where I grew up. We had the run of it. I knew every tree there,” Walter said.

“On your own, were you?”

“Sometimes. Jem and I, he’s my older brother, we’d staked out our favorite spots, but we let the others come along. Jerry and Carl, Shirley, and the girls—Nan and Di, Faith. Una. But I went alone too. That’s where I wrote, most often,” Walter said. He had a big family and a number of friends, all of them happy and hale, a cheerful father who never laid a hand on them. A mother they all worshipped, who came to them in the night when they were ill or scared. A far cry from Thomas’s childhood but he didn’t find any envy within himself when Walter spoke of them.

Walter didn’t want to go home.

“Poetry, right?” Thomas said. “What you wrote.”

“You could call it that,” Walter said, making the gesture that was now his version of a shrug. 

“You don’t?”

“What did I know of the world, Barrow? I don’t think I could ever read what I wrote then,” Walter said. “It’s all bloody fucking pretty nonsense—”

“Maybe you were just young,” Thomas said. Walter’s eyes had a frantic look of a man about to break down. Thomas reached over, touched Walter’s arm where it rested on the chair. 

“I was young,” Walter said. “I dreamed such dreams. And now I can’t remember them without  wanting to be sick.”

“That passes,” Thomas said.

“You sound so certain,” Walter replied.

“I’ve got to be,” Thomas said. A confession. 

“It’s that way, then?” Walter asked.

“Just so,” Thomas answered.

*

“She’s got a face like a flower,” Walter said as Sybil walked across the room. Thomas had come over to tell her the Earl was asking for her, but it had been an excuse. A poor one, far weaker than anything he would have allowed himself before the War. Walter kept watching Sybil. Thomas felt his gorge rise.

“Thought you said you weren’t a poet anymore,” Thomas remarked.

“That’s not poetry,” Walter said. “It’s an observation any man here would make.”

“Not the way you made it,” Thomas said flatly.

“Is it an argument you want, Barrow?” Walter said. There was something in the way he said want, the way he said Barrow, something direct and stunning. It was irresistible.

“It’s what I can get,” he said.

There was a curious expression in Walter’s grey eyes that could never have been there before the trenches. Thomas suspected it had been there when Walter led the charge at Courcelette. When he hadn’t expected to return to the world.

“So sure,” he said softly. “So wrong.”

“Seems to me you’re arguing with me right now, Blythe,” Thomas said.

“I’m not arguing. I’m observing,” Walter said.

“Safer that way, isn’t it?” Thomas replied, giving them both an out. He looked down at his feet, the uneven shine on his boots. His hands resting on his thighs, the bandage around the maimed one. His ticket home, he’d thought it, before he got back to Downton and realized there wasn’t any leaving, only trying to find someone who was caught in the same way. Who cared, who could see a flower and turn away from its loveliness.

“Nothing’s safe. Not anymore,” Walter said. “Maybe it never was and I was just pretending—”

“Maybe you think too much,” Thomas said.

“What else do I have to do?” Walter said. 

“Ask for me,” Thomas heard himself say. He was shocked by the words, uttered aloud, a secret. A wish.

“I shall keep that in mind,” Walter said. 

*

Walter wasn’t getting any better.

That was Clarkson’s diagnosis, not Thomas’s, but as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t disagree with the man. Sybil, external optimist, pointed out that Corporal Blythe was able to stay awake for longer periods and had not turned away a meal in a week, and they all nodded, because those things were true.

They didn’t signify, not when it came to Walter’s progress. They were exhausting what could be done for him at Downton. Had done, except that no one liked to disappoint Sybil and there hadn’t been an urgent need for an empty bed. It couldn’t last.

“I’m an old crock, aren’t I, Barrow?” Walter said, not bitterly.

“If you exerted yourself more—”

“I have done. It’s no use,” Walter said. He smiled, his unmarked face terribly handsome, his hair in need of a cut. He’d begun to go grey, not only at the temples but scattered throughout. “I shan’t write again and I think I must become accustomed to this chair.”

“You’d put yourself in a grave if you could,” Thomas snapped.

“Yes. I think you’re right about that,” Walter said. “But I won’t do anything…foolish. I’m not capable of it. Just of being a fool, sickening on my folly—”

“Are you quoting someone again? Remember, that’s wasted on me,” Thomas said.

“No. A flight of fancy, a glimpse of Walter-Before. I told you, you wouldn’t care for him.”

Thomas turned and faced Walter directly. It was a rare gesture; most often Thomas was off to the side, pushing the chair, engaged in some work. Watching Walter across a room, obliquely. Concealed.

“You’ve got to try,” he said. “Else—”

The pause was long, long enough for another conversation to fill it, one of exhortation and coaxing, reassurance and even, possibly, declaration. 

“Time has been friend to neither of us,” Walter finally said. He knew about Thomas’s father the clockmaker and Thomas’s War. He knew that men at Downton didn’t go back to the Front, but they didn’t stay longer than a few months. They went to Glenside or Allison Court. Or they were sent home. 

“If you’d only try, Blythe,” Thomas said.

“Get me a pencil then,” Walter replied. “I need to be able to write my own letters.”

*

“Dear Thomas,

I find I cannot address you here as Barrow, though it was all that I called you at Downton Abbey. I will admit it was not the only way I thought of you by the end of my time there and I hope you don’t find that presumptuous, nor this letter. You did tell me to try and look where that’s landed me.

Oxford, as you must know from the envelope, if not through some other channel. I imagine Mrs. Crawley might have mentioned what became of poor Corporal Blythe. She is a kind lady, but she very much reminds me of a family friend, a Mrs. Rachel Lynde, who is famous for her forceful opinions and her determination to keep tabs on anyone who has ever crossed her path. Mrs. Crawley is perhaps a generation younger, but made in the same mold. If she is not quite as well-informed as Mrs. Rachel, I’ll explain what happened.

I couldn’t go home. 

It was not only the risk of the ship being sunk in the crossing, nor the difficulty my limited mobility posed, nor the expense my family might incur trying to make the trip comfortable and me even more a ruined crock dependent on their management and pocket-book. (I must inform you that writing a celebrated war-poem doesn’t yield any significant financial success and you have a good idea of what’s found in a corporal’s pay-packet.) I couldn’t make the journey and then arrive at the train station in the Glen, my family and all their closest friends and half the town lined up, scrubbed and dressed as if for a wedding, flowers and Susan’s best cake waiting for me at Ingleside. I couldn’t make my way off that train and face them, knowing what I know, being who I am now. And even less could I have faced every day thereafter, the praise and reassurance and consolation, their pride and their poorly concealed pity, the guilt in my father’s eyes, the gratitude in my mother’s. Of everyone, I could only imagine Una Meredith greeting me and not making me feel like a monster and as much as I love them all, I have to live with myself.

I left university to enlist and I need the chair more than you think I ought and I can’t expect my father to put me up in a London flat to molder, but I am a well-regarded poet of no little renown, at least at this moment, when all the better poets are trying to escape being gassed or shot, so I wrote to Oxford and they agreed to let me come and finish my degree and very likely become one of those Oxford dons who is never without their gown. A gown hides a multitude of injuries, I’ve discovered, from those around you and sometimes from you yourself, and when I cannot think of how to turn the page, I can pleat the Russell cord with my good hand and pay attention only to the texture of the material. It helps a little.

Other things do as well. The town is so very beautiful and so different from the Glen and the Front. It is a place that does well with ghosts, so the relative absence of young men isn’t felt quite so much, and the smell of the stone and the old books is a tonic. It can be hard to get around, but that’s true for many of the elderly professors. The tea is not as as well-brewed as Mrs. Patmore’s but that was to be expected. My coursework occupies me, the distance of the past a balm. I believe if I could study the people here before the Druids, I’d find that even more comforting, but allegory and mysticism suit me well. I’ve begun to learn Old English and if I can’t find it within myself to write poetry, I can at least appreciate those old works and take respite there.

You must be frowning at my nonsense or wishing I’d written something more practical. I couldn’t blame you—I don’t, Thomas. I miss you, that expression in your blue eyes and the curl of your lip, your calm, your sense of shadows. I should have asked any number of questions before I left Downton Abbey, but I didn’t, so I must ask them now and hope for the best. I have no idea what leave you are entitled to and how you choose to use yours; I know you don’t have the same rapport with your sister as I had with mine, but I don’t know if you have friends you’d visit or prefer to travel to London and escape the country. I don’t know if you would want to come and see me but I would like it, very much. I could promise not to ramble on too much about old manuscripts or interrogate you about Dr. Clarkson and la belle dame Lady Mary. We might go punting on the Cherwell, though you’d have to do the work while I regaled you from a position of repose, or I could stand you a pint or three at the King’s Arms. The porter for my hall is rather a friend of mine and would find a camp-bed if I asked, so you needn’t fret about finding lodgings. It would be just as you like, for as long as you like.

You told me once to ask for you. And now, Thomas, I have. Will you come?

Walter.”

@tortoisesshells gave me "my Heart -- my Eye outweighs" as a fic I wouldn't write but then I did write it, though I renamed it.

[k2kid]

"... a magnificent spectacle...": Eye Witness at Flers-Courcelette

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

LOOK WITHIN THESE EYES OF MADNESS AND DESPAIR -- "WAR IS A BLACK HOLE TO AVOID."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on a shell shocked Allied soldier in a trench during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette during the Somme Offensive, c. September 1916.

PIC #2: The original photograph. Medical orderlies tend to the wounded in a trench during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette in mid-September 1916. The man on the left is suffering from Shell Shock. Photographer unknown.

OVERVIEW: "His eyes express the madness of the war. The soldier looks like he has gone insane from what he has seen. In that moment in time everything he’s been raised to work within, the social constructs which make up every part of his life just exploded and shattered to nothing, and he’s lying there, slumped in a trench, afraid for his life, hearing and seeing death around him, his entire psyche broken. Even more haunting when you think that people didn’t smile for the pictures back then.

PART II: The circumstances of the First World War pushed hundreds of thousands of men beyond the limits of human endurance. They faced weapons that denied any chance for heroism or courage or even military skill because the artillery weapons that caused 60 percent of all casualties were miles away from the battlefield.

PART III: The term “shell shock” was coined by the soldiers themselves. Symptoms included fatigue, tremor, confusion, nightmares and impaired sight and hearing, an inability to reason, hysterical paralysis, a dazed thousand-yard stare is also typical. It was often diagnosed when a soldier was unable to function and no obvious cause could be identified. "Simply put, after even the most obedient soldier had enough shells rain down on him, without any means of fighting back, he often lost all self-control.""

-- RARE HISTORICAL PHOTOS

Source: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/shell-shocked-soldier-1916.

[the-moral-of-the-rose]

Rilla of Ingleside created a new timeline...

Anne's House of Dreams mentioned a historical event - a federal election: “Mistress Blythe, the Liberals are in with a sweeping majority. After eighteen years of Tory mismanagement this down-trodden country is going to have a chance at last.” (AHoD).

From Wikipedia: "The 1896 Canadian federal election was held on June 23, 1896, to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 8th Parliament of Canada. Though the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Charles Tupper, won a plurality of the popular vote, the Liberal Party, led by Wilfrid Laurier, won the majority of seats to form the next government. The election ended 18 years of Conservative rule."

It wouldn't be surprsing, but... it was also the year in which Jem Blythe was born! The election took place few weeks after his birth: "When Anne came downstairs again, the Island, as well as all Canada, was in the throes of a campaign preceding a general election." (AHoD).

So... according to this timeline, Walter was born a year later (1897), then the twins (1899), Shirley (1901) and Rilla (1903).

The point is... at the outbreak of the war, Walter would have been only 17 years old, the twins 15, Shirley 13, Rilla 11...

Shirley would have been too young to participate in the war and Walter would have barely turned nineteen at the time of the Battle of Flers-Courcelette in September of 1916...

Someone in one of my older posts noticed that puff sleeves fashion suggested that Anne of Green Gables took place in 1880s rather than 1870s... so it would make sense!

I wonder why Montgomery chose Rilla as her teenage heroine (according to the original chronology, Rilla should have been only 11 years old), while there were 15-year-old twins...

Can you imagine Nan and Di as the main characters of the war book? Two young girls at Queen's, trying to come to terms with rapidly changing world? Rilla and Shirley at Ingleside, growing closer in such trying times? Teenage boys - Jem and Walter - who had to choose if they wanted to sacrifice their life at even younger age - at eighteen? Walter, never reaching the age of twenty (or maybe - dare I hope - coming back home safely)? Anne and Gilbert in their 40s, trying to collect all the broken pieces that was once their family?

It would have been equally good, in my opinion. I wonder... why Montgomery felt she had to suddenly change a whole chronology?

Side note: of course, I love Rilla of Ingleside. But I am just curious... (Nan and Di of Ingleside would be a good book, too!).

@diario-de-gilbert-blythe @gogandmagog @pinkenamelheart @valancystirling48

[herprivateswe]

The Battle of Flers Courcelette 15 -22 September: Canadians testing a Vickers machine gun.

[aisakalegacy]

Automne 1916, Hylewood, Canada (1/4)

Chers cousins,

Merci pour les nouvelles de la famille. Je suis heureux d’apprendre que Constantin et Adelphe vont bien. Transmettez à Rose et à Juliette tous mes encouragements. J’ai fait ma convalescence à l’hôpital de Lijddsenthoek, et c’est bien grâce à l’effort de femmes comme elles que les pauvres yabes comme moi se remettent de leurs mutilations.

Je suis avec attention la progression du 22e Batataillon dans le journal. Mes anciens camarades sont sortis des tranchées belges et se battent actuellement dans la Somme, dans le village de Courcelette, et livrent des combats acharnés pour déloger les Allemands qui occupent ce village. Il parait que les hommes y sont sans ravitaillement en armes, fournitures et eau, ce qui les contraint à se battre au corps à corps, au poing ou à la pelle. Les pertes y sont inquiétantes, et j’attends avec appréhension des nouvelles de mes cousins.

[redplaidjacket]

Every time I read a WWI fic, and every time I know this is coming, and every time I am heartbroken, all over again. Walter dies in Courcelette.

[batrachised]

Fic Recs

So I'm about to hop off the internet for Lent (i'll just be checking this blog weekly and I FULLY expect ya'll to tag me in all interesting LMM things I might otherwise miss), and I thought as a last hurrah, I'd curate a rec list of my favorite Walter Blythe fanfics!! We Walter Blythe fans are a small but mighty group, shown in the love for him in fic. The following includes Walter lives AUs, Walter in the background, Walter and Una, Walter and Jem...thanks to all of these wonderful fic authors who have gifted us with such incredible stories!

Come Back Home by freyafrida: Walter survives Courcelette. In a way.

The king of all Walter lives AUs in my head. The characterization is very believable, and the slow build of a relationship between Walter and Una sweet. This fic is what turned me onto my "must write 10k of fic about walter/una in two days'" path. I particularly like how this fic continues LMM's work in acknowledging the impact of the war on PEI.

Arcos Iris by freyafrida: The Blythes and Merediths grow up. (One-shots set between Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside.)

Honestly I recommend everything by this author because the character work is great. The little snippets fill in emotional gaps I didn't even know I had regarding the story, whether it's more child Walter and Una interaction or the beginnings of Faith & Jem's friendship evolving into romance.

but i don't know who you are by freyafrida: Five people Walter thought he wanted, and one person he didn't notice until it was too late.

at this point you may be wondering, does batrachised read any other author besides this one? But once again, Walter feels very true to the books in these vignettes. I also like the interpretation of a bi Walter. This also provides a wider cast of characters (we get a paul and a pat cameo!).

A New Morning by fluffybun. AU from Rilla of Ingleside. Walter returns to Ingleside many years after the war. Squint at relationships.

I love how this fleshes out what happens to the characters after Rilla, even in brief glimpses. I also love this fic's take on Walter's view of Una--he thinks of her as "realized hope," and I was like 🥺 🥺 🥺 

True things that are not, but might be by alwaysspeakshermind. A rambling collection of random tales that feature some of my favorite L.M. Montgomery characters/background relationships.

This collection of stories was downright precious and does a fantastic job nailing LMM's writing style. While only one chapter focuses on Walter, the rest are worth the read. A sampling of its delight:

“He would,” Jem agreed, thinking wryly of his brother’s tendency to imagine himself right into the shoes of just about anyone or anything. Once when they were younger, he’d seen Dad sit him down and explain very seriously that toads were durable creatures and highly unlikely to die of a broken heart, so there was not much point in worrying about them.

[theworldofwars]

German Prisoners

From 15 to 20 September 1916, the Canadians captured and held the village of Courcelette. During that time, they took 1,040 German prisoners. Canadians here are seen providing the prisoners with cigarettes, food, and drinks. Prisoners would then likely have been taken to cages behind the lines, and finally to prisoner of war camps in France or England.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Battle of Flers-Courcelette. A stretcher-borne wounded soldier waves his helmet (and leg) as he is carried in by German prisoners. Near Ginchy, 15th September 1916.

[jomiddlemarch]

A letter always seemed to me like immortality

Everyone Diana wanted to write to was dead.

Walter, what seemed like a dozen lifetimes ago, at Courcelette if his last letter to Rilla was to be believed; Diana had often wondered whether he had already considered himself a dead man walking before the day of the last battle, the boy he’d been destroyed beyond repair or rebirth.

Aunt Leslie, whom she’d found it easier to talk to than her own mother, perhaps because she’d also had a brother she adored. Perhaps because she’d left Glen St. Mary and never missed it. 

Perhaps because Leslie liked whiskey better than tea, newspapers better than poetry. 

Una, who’d been too pale since she barely survived nursing her father and stepmother through the Spanish flu, who’d been someone everyone underestimated or decided to treat as a martyr, who would not have judged Di the way her own sisters would. 

Rosalind Foyle, whom she’d had to ask about as discreetly as she could, counting on her general reception as a cheerful and polite Canadian, not much like a bossy Yank, to yield her the few details she’d squirreled away. An artist, a mother. A beauty. Better-bred than her husband, well-liked, she’d had elegant hands and never forgot to wear gloves.

Diana only wore gloves to operate and if an actual gale was blowing in a blizzard.

Who had thought all she wanted was to go to France, to make something of her life that would last her the rest of it. That might make the rest of it of a duration she could bear, an end her family could cope with or justify why she’d never return to PEI.

Dear Una, You’re the best one to write to, I think. The one who’d mind the least, like it the most. The least awkward for me to imagine reading this, the least likely to tell me something I don’t want to know. I leave for France in a few weeks and now I don’t want to go. Or rather, I do and then I don’t. There’s something holding me in England now, something to do with Walter, a mystery. Men, who’ve died. A man who’s alive, very much so.

A man I want to know. His name is Foyle. Christopher. He knew Walter, said Walter knew him as Kit. Everyone calls him Foyle or sir or Superintendent. Christopher. Oh Una, I thought this was behind me. That it was something I’d never have to deal with, some sort of consolation of being a woman in a world missing a generation of men. I thought I wouldn’t know this and that was a relief, watching you and Rilla and Nan. Faith. Mary. I thought it was fair, that I’d never know heartbreak like this. And now there’s Christopher. A half-dozen dead men. Walter’s poem. And France, waiting for me. I have to go, I know that, but how do I go wanting to stay here, a place I can’t call home. Wanting to come back.

Christopher. I like writing his name because I oughtn’t say it often. That’s what a young girl does, lovesick, dull, embarrassing herself, making everyone around her smile behind their hands unless it’s Miss Cornelia, scolding you for making a fool of yourself and for what, a man? What’s a man worth, I ask you—can’t you hear her say it, tart, ready to wash her hands of us— I don’t care what a man’s worth, Una. Just Christopher. And I can’t answer the question, not to satisfy Miss Cornelia or you or myself.

You’d write me back something comforting, if you could. If you hadn’t died before your time, twice over, after the telegram, after the epidemic. I should have insisted you leave before me or with me. I should have told your father you were worth more than all the rest of them put together or made Dad send you away to convalesce, somewhere warm, where you might have lolled about, turning brown in the sun. I’ve said I’ll go to France and sew up the men who need sewing up. Cut off the parts that need cutting off. I’ve said that’s my life, my vocation, as important as Mother’s poetry, as Walter’s, as the babies Jem delivers and the columns Ken Ford writes, and it must be but now there’s murder and Christopher to contend with, a dozen mysteries at the heart of me. For it seems I’ve a heart after all, Una. It beats and beats and leaps when it oughtn’t. It will break, I know it shall.

Christopher. I’ll take a dream in lieu of a letter. A flower, out of place, in lieu of a word. Answer me if you can, Una. You can’t and I know that, but I’ll still hope, silly Di Blythe.

She put the letter in an envelope but left it unsealed and unaddressed.

Left the envelope in an otherwise empty drawer of the desk in her flat. If she didn’t return from France, well, that didn’t bear thinking about too closely. If her papers were sent back to Canada, her father would likely burn the letter rather than let her mother see it unless if gave it to Nan, thinking her twin would derive some comfort and, happily married to Jerry, the bonny wife and mother Di had not made of herself, could weather any pang it gave her.

If somehow it ended up with Christopher, he’d know how she’d once felt.

She could make that happen, writing his name across the white field of the envelope, but that was too much like a dare, and for all she was her father’s daughter, she still had her mother’s wise fear of the fey.

She’d written his name enough. She’d hope she’d come back to say it.

[adtothebone]

The combination of vintage magazines and modern Internet resources creates as many questions as it answers, like, a tank called "Crème de Menthe"?

https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWtankdevelop.htm

https://legionmagazine.com/en/caterpillars-at-courcelette/

[aunti-christ-ine]

Medical orderlies tending to the wounded during the Battle of Courcelette, in mid-September 1916.

A shell shocked British solider, WWI, 1916