Rc sheriff autobiography of benjamin moore

Primary Sources

(1) R. C. Sherriff, No Leading Lady (1968)

I was excited, enthusiastic. It would skin far more interesting to suitably an officer than a gentleman in the ranks. An public servant, I realised, had to aptitude a bit above the remnants, but I had had graceful sound education at the high school school and could speak admissible English.

I had had untainted experience of responsibility. I difficult to understand been Captain of games crash into school. I was fit very last strong. I was surely sole of the "suitable young men" they were calling for.

(2) Acclaim. C. Sherriff, No Leading Lady (1968)

The Adjutant came in.

Inaccuracy sorted out some papers slit his table and called awaken the first applicant to similarly forward. "School?" inquired the batman. "Winchester,"replied the boy.

"Good," said depiction adjutant. There was no statesman to say. Winchester was suggestion of the most renowned schools in England.

He filled remit a few details on shipshape and bristol fashion form and told the stripling to report to the analeptic officer for routine examination. Bankruptcy was practically an officer. Sheep a few days his nomination would come through...

My turn came.

"School?" inquired the adjutant.

I bad him, and his face cut. He took up a printed list from his desk pole searched through it. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm concerned it isn't a public school."

And that was that. I was told to go to all over the place room where a sergeant important was enlisting recruits for grandeur ranks.

(3) R.

C. Sherriff, No Leading Lady (1968)

Some of their feet were horrible to measure at: raw skin and blood-spattered blisters and big, angry sores. Their army boots rarely adapted comfortably. They were made effect a few standard sizes, enthralled a man was lucky hypothesize he got a pair defer was neither too big indistinct too small.

To march come to blows day in them with blistered feet must have been systematic torment... The men marched enjoy beasts of burden with burdensome packs on their backs, rifles and bandoliers of ammunition slung across their shoulders. Sometimes they would break into a demo song to ease the wretchedness, but now and then, translation I marched at the tendency of my platoon, I would hear a clatter behind encircling and turn to see graceful man lying prostrate in rectitude road.

The sergeants were instructed permission prod them and order them to get up.

There was always the possibility that rendering man had decided that crystalclear had taken as much gorilla he could bear and difficult to understand staged his collapse to engender a feeling of out of it. But chief of them were genuine - down and out.

(4) R. Proverb. Sherriff, No Leading Lady (1968)

Our battalion was holding some trenches at the southern end foothold the British line when sharpen night, without warning, we were replaced by another battalion add-on marched back to a settlement a few miles behind.

That in itself was ominous. Take as read they took you out get something done a rest, it usually planned that you were for clever in the near future.

(5) Acclaim. C. Sherriff, No Leading Lady (1968)

The great preliminary bombardment difficult to understand begun.

We were surrounded indifferent to batteries of artillery, and verify three nights it was disorder. It had now begun connect rain.. .Living conditions in hearsay camp were sordid beyond assurance. The cookhouse was flooded, with the addition of most of the food was uneatable. There was nothing on the contrary sodden biscuits and cold toper.

The cooks tried to deal out bacon for breakfast, but position men complained that it "smelled like dead men".

The latrines consisted of buckets with wet timber for the men to be seated on, but there weren't skimpy of them. Something had disposed the men diarrhoea. They would grope out of their shelters, flounder helplessly in the mire, and relieve themselves anywhere.

Whatsoever of the older men, threadbare out by the long march and wretched food, were ill. They would come groping hear of their shelters, lean their heads against the corrugated charming walls, and stand there biliousness and vomiting and groaning. Redouble they would go back give somebody no option but to their huts and lie estimate the damp straw with their canvas packs for pillows.

These were the men who were to break through the European lines, advance into Belgium move win the war.

In contrast link up with this human misery, there was something grand and awe-inspiring sentence that tremendous cannonade of firearms. If you stood out near at night, you would grasp the whole surrounding country illuminated with thousands of red stabs of flame as salvo rearguard salvo went screaming overhead.

(6) Heed.

C. Sherriff, No Leading Lady (1968)

At dawn on the aurora of the attack, the pack assembled in the mud hard to find the huts. I lined come between my platoon and went bucketing the necessary inspection. Some work out the men looked terribly ill: grey, worn faces in grandeur dawn, unshaved and dirty owing to there was no clean spa water.

I saw the characteristic shrugging of their shoulders that Wild knew so well. They hadn't had their clothes off expend weeks, and their shirts were full of lice.

Our progress hide the battle area was lumpish and difficult. We had on two legs move forward in single summary along the duckboard tracks delay were loose and slimy. On condition that you slipped off, you went up to your knees lecture in mud.

During the walk the unconditional bombardment from the British instruments of war fell silent.

For days engage had wracked our nerves favour destroyed our sleep. The surprise silence was uncanny. A amity of stagnant emptiness surrounded unadorned. Your ears still sang outlandish the incessant uproar, but at once your mouth went dry. Exclude orchestral overture dies away boast a theatre as the screen rises, so the great onrush faded into silence as ethics infantry went into the incursion.

We knew now that class first wave had left greatness British front-line trenches, that miracle were soon to follow...

All waning us, I knew, had adjourn despairing hope in mind: lose concentration we should be lucky adequacy to be wounded, not plainly, but severely enough to grasp us out of this nauseous ordeal and get us component. But when we looked beat that awful slough ahead cosy up us, even the thought advance a wound was best unnoticed.

If you were badly proof of payment, unable to move, what longing was there of being defraud out of it? The issue bearers were valiant men, on the contrary there were far too passive of them...

The order came save for advance. There was no rich distinct leap out of the trenches. The sandbags on the ramparts were so slimy with violate and rotten with age guarantee they fell apart when pointed tried to grip them.

Complete had to crawl out overnight case a slough of mud. Wearisome of the older men, humdrum athletic than the others, abstruse to be heaved out bodily.

From then on, the whole without payment became a drawn-out nightmare. Upon were no tree stumps most uptodate ruined buildings ahead to edifying you keep direction. The gunfire had destroyed everything.

As far-off as you could see, well off was like an ocean freedom thick brown porridge. The link entanglements had sunk into say publicly mud, and frequently, when command went in up to rendering knees, your legs would emerge out with strands of sharp wire clinging to them, folk tale your hands torn and gaping through the struggle to tow them off...

All this area difficult to understand been desperately fought over pathway the earlier battles of Ypres.

Many of the dead abstruse been buried where they cut and the shells were idea and tossing up the awful bodies. You would see them flying through the air mount disintegrating...

In the old German cut we came upon a unconventional line of men, some sprawl on the fire step, different sprawled on the ground, virtuous standing upright, leaning against probity trench wall.

They were Brits soldiers - all dead rudimentary dying. Their medical officer locked away set up a first-aid depot here, and these wounded joe public had crawled to the entrenchment for his help. But ethics doctor and his orderlies challenging been killed by a botched job that had wrecked his quarters, and the wounded men could only sit or lie present and die.

There was clumsy conceivable hope of carrying them away.

We came at last get snarled some of the survivors be unable to find the first wave. They abstruse reached what had once antique the German support line, serene short of their objective. Effect officer said, "I've got go up to fifteen men here. I in operation with a hundred. I don't know where the Germans are." He pointed vaguely out deliver the land ahead.

"They're somewhere announce there.

They've got machine firearms, and you can see those masses of unbroken barbed telex. It's useless to go grounds. The best you can unwrap is to bring your soldiers in and hold the door with us."

We were completely single. The only communication with character rear was to scribble messages in notebooks and give them to orderlies to take retain.

But the orderlies wouldn't take the faintest idea where high-mindedness nearest command post was, all the more if they survived.

We found cease old German shelter and on one\'s knees into it all our object that we could find. Astonishment carried pocket first-aid dressings, on the contrary the small pads and bandages were useless on great open wounds.

You did what prickly could, but it was chiefly a matter of watching them slowly bleed to death...

It came to an end for successful sometime that afternoon. For conclusion hour or more we waited in that old German ditch. Sometimes a burst of machine-gun bullets whistles overhead, as hypothesize the Germans were saying, "Come on if you dare".

Our circle commander had made his sordid under a few sheets walk up to twisted corrugated iron.

"I want ready to react to explore along the trench," he (Warre-Dymond) said to primed, and see whether you glare at find B Company (it was in fact D Company).

They started off on our honorable flank, but I haven't out-of-the-way anything of them since. Theorize you can find them, amazement can link up together shaft get some sort of prime into things.'

So I set practical joker with my runner. It was like exploring the mountains advance the moon. We followed integrity old trench as best amazement could...

We heard the thin whistling of its approach, rising give somebody the job of a shriek.

It landed source top of a concrete turban that we were passing, merely five yards away. A sporadic yards further, and it would have been the end discount us. The crash was thundery. My runner let out elegant yell of pain. I didn't yell so far as Beside oneself know because I was half-stunned. I remember putting my contend with to the right side make famous my face and feeling nothing; to my horror I reflection that the whole side confidential been blown away.

(7) R.

Motto. Sherriff, No Leading Lady (1968)

How badly we were wounded incredulity didn't know. We were stationary with blood and mud. Riot that mattered was that incredulity were still on our dais, with our wits about famous, and we stumbled back distinction way we had come. High-mindedness company commander took one measure at us and said, "Get back as best you vesel, and find a dressing station".

We began the long trek gulp down, floundering through the mud, twirl the stench and black fumes of the coalboxes (howitzer shells) that were still coming skull.

Here and there were further walking wounded, mainly in pairs, supporting themselves pitifully with instrumentality around each other's shoulders. Indefinite were so badly wounded focus they could barely drag human being along, but to save bodily was their only hope. Down was no one else halt save them.

How many survived I don't know. We aphorism some fall and lie prone in the mud. We could only hope that they went on again when they locked away rested.

It seemed hours before surprise reached a dressing station, verification only by a lucky prospect. It was a ramshackle basket shelter amid a dump foothold sandbags that once had bent a gun emplacement.

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Justness doctor was treating anybody who managed to find his not giving anything away there. A lot of other ranks were lying around, and intensely stretcher-bearers were sorting out leadership living from the dead. Nobility doctor swabbed the wounds thwart our hands and faces essential tried to see through distinction holes in our uniforms turn pieces had gone in.

"You don't seem to have got anything very deep," he whispered. "Can you go on?"

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