Almost a mockery

It was another scorching day  – ‘typical June weather’ – and Sheriff, writing to Pips, was bemoaning his misfortune at not yet having received leave. In a 2 1/2 page letter, the only piece of news he shared was that, after he had handed his men over to an RE sergeant for a working party, he had retired to a quiet spot to read The Magnetic North [a 1904 novel by Elizabeth Robins], which had been sent to him by Pips. ‘[It] promises very well,’ he wrote, and he found himself even more interested in it ‘owing to its having come from home and being selected by you’.

Other than  that the letter was a long gripe about the fickleness of fate, and his overwhelming sense of disappointment:

‘If only I were with you! – and to think that if luck had favoured me I might have been…It is a thing almost amounting to a mockery for leave to approach so near on my birthday [6 June] – making me almost expect to be home on my birthday (as I must confess I did once) – causing you to write saying you may expect me home “shortly after this letter reaches you” and also that if you sent my presents “they would probably cross you on the way” – it is not your fault saying this – I know it was my fault for holding out too rash hopes that must now be given up temporarily, till a future time when luck and circumstance may favour hopes again.’

Percy High (rear left, with pipe). From ‘Memories of Active Service’, Vol 1, facing p 22. By permission of the Surrey History Centre (Ref: 2332/3/9/3/2)

It was possible that, after they had finished the work they were doing, he might once more have the opportunity to come home, but he was frustrated that, having seen 12 officers go off on leave – and for him to be next in line – leave now seemed to have been stopped. He was trying to approach it stoically (‘It is one of those little things that fate decides, I am sure – and it is no good to fight against these circumstances’), and having thought about putting his case for special leave to the Commanding Officer, had decided against it (‘one has to wait for these things to come to you in the Army – it is no good applying unless one has got special reasons’).

Finally, having spent a couple of pages railing at the injustice of it all, he began to calm down:

 ‘But enough of this – it has been a big disappointment  which one feels nothing will compensate. But by laws of average I expect everything comes to the same in the end. Perhaps I have had an easier time than the other men who have gone on leave, or perhaps one day in the future – all going well – I may go on leave and be glad I did not get it now. So I will drop the subject now – I have not got what I expected and that is an end of it. I expect I will find in Epictetus some prose that will comfort me in disappointment – and there is a man who came out with me who shares my same disappointment – a schoolmaster whose company in moonlight walks after dinner I find most pleasing – a man of about 38 who can talk of interesting things and I always enjoy the company of elder [sic] men if they will associate with you.’ [The man in question was  [Percy High], a plausible model for Osborne in Journey’s End, and a man who features several times in Sherriff’s letters, as well as in his unpublished memoir, Memories of Active Service.]

[Next letter: 5 June]

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