116 AWARDED FOR VALOUR
Grenfell, cousin of VC winner Francis Grenfell, fairly bristled to be at the
Hun:
I have not washed for a week, or had my boots off for a fortnightit is
allthebest fun. I have never felt so well, or so happy, or enjoyed anything
so much. It just suits my stolid health, and stolid nerves, and barbaric
disposition. The fighting-excitement vitalizes everything, every sight and
word and action. One loves one’s fellow man so much more when one
is bent on killing him.^28
Nor was this eagerness confined to the officer corps. Corporal John Lucy
recorded the reaction of his company to deployment at Mons: ‘Keen as
mustard, we set about overhauling our fighting gear, cleaning and re-
cleaning our rifles and recently sharpened bayonets, easing up our cartridge
clips, and looking forward eagerly to action.’^29
Others were more philosophical in their approach to war, but every bit
as enthusiastic. Rupert Brooke declared:
Well, we are doing our best. Give us what prayers or cheers you can.
It’s a great life, fighting, while it lasts. The eye grows clearer and the
heart stronger. But it’s a bloody thing, half the youth of Europe blown
through pain to nothingness, in the incessant mechanical slaughter of
these modern battles.^30
Even the shock of the ‘mechanical slaughter’ at Mons did little to dampen the
spirit of the BEF, either in the field or in those regiments hastily assembled
at home and thrust across the Channel:
All through the night we march, rocking about on our feet from want to
sleep, and falling fast asleep even if the halt lasted only a minute. Towards
dawn we turned into a farm, and for about two hours I slept in a pigsty.
[Later] an order was read to us that the men who had kept their overcoats
were to dump them, as we were to advance at any moment. Strangely, a
considerable amount of cheering took place then.^31
Back in Britain news of the reverses in Belgium prompted Captain Lionel
Crouch to write a remarkably prescient letter to his father from training
camp:
lily
(lily)
#1