We don’t often hear from Agnes Miller, who stands at the other end of the experiential gulf–not to mention two oceans–from Olaf Stapledon. But she seems to be a worthy young woman, and he a fortunate young man.
I have had two more letters from you today… & oh such letters! the 21st & 29th April. How thankful indeed I am that you are safe out of that dreadful battered village… I am so glad you tell me things, dear. They stir me up & make me stern & quiet & wild & envious, but I would not be kept in a glass case & have you tell me like most boys would, “The old Bosche made us sit up the other day for a few hours but it’s all over now etc.”
I want to see with you & feel with you (as much as I can). I’m your friend, your mate, your wife… don’t spare me… I don’t want to be spared….[1]
Reading a letter like that must remind us of Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton, and what they had. But Roland is long dead, now, and she and her brother have lost the other two young men who meant most to them. When Edward Brittain returned to France nearly a year after his wounding on the Somme, she couldn’t bring herself to see him off at the station. And indeed, his return to active service will begin with the quotidian frustration familiar to veterans, and not the high drama of the innocent’s first immersion.
France, 25 June 1917
My valise is still lost but I thought I had better come on here yesterday so I left Boulogne about midday. As I have for the moment got a good servant I am quite alright as he was able to get me some blankets without any fleas and I managed to borrow a towel and such other things as I lack from other officers. That valise is an absolute mystery…
Then, later today, worse news:
Owing apparently to some foolish mistake of the War Office I am going to be sent to the 2nd Bn. instead of the 11th.
Toujours
Edward[2]
No valise and no friends or familiar men–comforts will be thin, this time out.
Also today, a century back, in a movement that seems to counterbalance Edward Brittain’s in several symbolic ways, Wilfred Owen at long last went before a Medical Board. The board drew no strong conclusions but sketched a character that will seem, if perhaps a little presumptuous given an acquaintance of minutes, not far wrong: “little abnormality to be observed but he seems to be of a highly strung temperament.”
With considerable wisdom, it would seem, the Board–which must conclude one way or the other about the legitimacy of his post-concussion symptoms–erred on the side of safety and therapeutic possibility. Owen was sent immediately to Craiglockahart hospital, near Edinburgh, which specialized in treating officers with “war neuroses.” While certainly relieved to have his condition given official medical recognition, Owen was initially quite annoyed that he was ordered to Scotland without any home leave. He made the best of it by stopping in London to see the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and then caught the night train to Edinburgh, for whatever might await him in the North…[3]