The town with the badly strafed cathedral, and virgin nearly toppling over

The golden statue of the Madonna, on the Basilica in Albert, holding aloft her child, was a symbol of hope for the British Army. Damaged early in 1915 it hanged at an angle throughout most of the war. 

After the Battle for Thiepval Ridge the 8th Battalion were moved to Forceville (where they were congratulated by Brigadier Higginson for their success at Thiepval) and then on to Heuzecourt for a week where they were prepared for an offensive on Regina Trench which was scheduled for the 16th, then 19th and finally the 21st October. The postponements were due to increasingly poor weather.

The Indian summer had been succeeded by persistent rain and cold. Winter was coming.

On the 12th October the Battalion was in battle order rehearsing the attack in front of Major-General Ivor Maxse. He also congratulated the men on their success at Thiepval.

Albert - the town with the badly strafed cathedral and virgin nearly toppling over

On the 13th October they were moved up to Albert, the town with the badly strafed cathedral and virgin nearly toppling over. This was an important staging post used to hold soldiers before they were deployed in the trenches during the Battle of the Somme.

The virgin nearly toppling over is a statue of the virgin Mary, which had formerly been standing upright on the Basilica in the centre of town. She had been hit by shellfire and no longer held her baby above her head towards the sky as if presenting Him to God. It is easy to see symbolic meaning in her precarious position. It is reminiscent of Yeat's The second coming, the statue is hanging head diagonally down, seeming to present Jesus to the troops who walked below on the way to the trenches: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...[the] rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born¹.

The British and German soldiers believed that when the statue fell, the war would end, and also that whichever side caused the statue to fall would be the losers.

For Edwin, in this letter, it was simply an effective way of identifying where he was stationed without naming it.

Fuller's diary

Waiting for orders that were delayed because of the weather, Fuller (the private from D company who kept an illegal diary) explored the Bapaume Road, where the front line had been before the Battle of Albert on 1st July. He describes how the old front line had not yet been cleared. "In it [a German trench he named "The Chamber of Horrors"] were several corpses, now mere dried skin and bones. On one of the wire netting beds was the body of a German soldier, on his back, his head hanging over the edge. He had no boots on and looked as if he had been killed in the act of getting off the bed. At the bottom of the flight of steps that lead to the smashed-in entrance, lay a pile of German bodies, as if they had been killed as they tried to get up the steps. Halfway up the flight of steps lay another German, on his back, head downwards, and on top of him lay a British soldier, face downwards, his hands apparently gripping the German by the throat. The Tommy was still wearing his steel helment and webbing equipment."

British soldiers, he presumes, had removed the German's buttons as trophies without touching the dead Tommy whose hand remains at the German's throat, but not removing the German's buttons which could not be reached presumably because they are under the dead British soldier.

On the next day he describes how an entire platoon was wiped out when an aeroplane dropped a bomb on it. 

On the 19th the Battalion relieved the Essex Regiment, rising at 3am in readiness for an attack to start at 2pm. Fuller's dug-out he noted has a foot of water in it, and the trenches are knee deep in liquid mud. The attack is postponed until the 21st.

On the morning of the 21st before the Regina attack began, the Essex Regiment relieved the 8th Battalion, and Edwin and his company were then held in reserve, billeted back in Albert by 10.30am. The attack went ahead, lead by the Essex. It started at 12.15pm. By 3pm prisoners filed past the Suffolks in Albert.

Edwin's letter dated 23rd October 1916

Edwin's letter is written from Albert after their narrow escape from this offensive. As Edwin tells his mother "The weather is bad, and consequently we dont know what may turn up now."

This is a short letter, and the tone is not markedly different to what preceded it. But there are perhaps some differences.

He more openly reveals his wish to come home, albeit temporarily, hoping it will be at Christmas.

He contemplates his death, something he has not done up to now, but he still remains prepared "to do anything or go anywhere."

Edwin reminds me a little of a boarder returned to school after a spell at home. At some point over the preceding three months, he seems to have assumed his role as a 2nd lieutenant, and with it, an insider's manner and language.

He no longer wrily observes that water is only used for washing - the view of an outsider. Now he tells his mother "The cigars are top hole". It is of course not clear whether he smoked cigars at home.

"Top hole" is a phrase that is associated with Edwardian England. It may have come into wider use in World War 1. It was later associated with the upper class², something which Edwin is not, but at that time it seems to have been used by the middle class too. It was certainly in widespread use in 1916. "Strafed" and "pipped" (which he uses elsewhere in the letter) were WW1 vernacular³.

Edwin imagines his father, after he has been killed, treasuring the gift given by Captain Angier. The gift is an expensive Dunhill pipe with "Thiepval" engraved on the bowl "if I get pipped at all, it will come home with my other effects. I should like Dad to smoke it, and treasure it as I should have done, but I hope to use it myself.".

The reality of war must have been clear to Edwin when he wrote this letter. He has had time to consider his experience at Thiepval. This letter is addressed, like the others, to his mother. So when Edwin imagines in it, a world in which his father is treasuring his [Edwin's] pipe after his death, he is changing the way in which he is presenting the war to his mother. 

Gone is the thought that he is being protected by Everlasting Arms.

The pipe is also evidence of a change of status, I believe. The giving of it a rite of passage. His bravery is evidenced by this gift from a senior officer - the man who is in charge of him and for whom he has already revealed his admiration, who has it engraved with the name of the battle in which he performed valiantly.

He is no longer asking to be an adult, he does not hide the truth, and his father sends him cigars in tacit acknowledgment of his adulthood. His mother more practically sends him shoes.

References

¹ The Second Coming, William Yeats (1919)

² For example Dorothy Sayers character Lord Peter Wimsey

³ Battlefield vernacular of World War 1 (1914 - 1918), David Tuffley