Blood and Thunder (14 page)

In 1909 further tragedy engulfed the Llewelyn Davies boys. Their mother Sylvia collapsed and was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. A number of relatives were to act on behalf of her boys, but she did not want them separated and therefore it ultimately made logistical sense for the wealthy Barrie to adopt them and for their faithful nurse to remain in a prominent position. Sylvia died in 1910, aged 43, and that autumn Peter arrived at Eton, not as an Oppidan like his brother but as a Colleger.

George was an unmitigated success at school and found a happy home with MacNaghten, far happier that Peter who lived in the teasing shadow of the character to whom he had given his name, wishing that somebody else had had the honour. George was a fine cricketer and, like Gerry Freeman-Thomas, had been a member of the XI that took on Harrow at Lord's in 1912. The prospect of him appearing at Lord's had excited his late mother. J.M. Barrie told George that she talked about it ‘with shining eyes'; and two years after her sad death her eldest son did not disappoint her. When Gerry was caught out for 64 on the first day it left his team at 116 for 4. Then Eton took a risk. For the Winchester match, the traditional precursor to Lords, George, primarily a bowler had sat at ten in the Etonian batting order. He had had a successful match. As well as taking four wickets for just eighteen runs, when George went in to bat in his only innings he had hit a curiously impressive 42. As a result, he had been bumped up to six in the order, a decision which was considered dubious by some.

George had already made a fantastic left-handed catch that found its way into the national press along with his photograph, but it was for his batting that George was to be commended that day. He began a little shakily, nerves perhaps, and in the face of one of Harrow's better bowlers he was failing to inspire the sweltering July crowd with any confidence. He should have been stumped for a single run, but luck was with him. Given a little time, George began to hit freely; beautifully even. Harrow had no fielders in the deep and in that situation he could begin swinging away with little risk of being out. He began hitting over the boundary and put together a string of fours, two of them in one over in ‘a most dashing innings'.

Peter described George as having ‘absolutely no vanity at all'. He quite clearly idolised his dashing older brother. In a lot of ways George resembled their father, and was quite reserved. He was never very vocal, in fact he was rather shy, but he was charming. His sense of humour was ‘exquisite' and when Peter arrived at Eton he was left open mouthed and in complete wonderment at his brother's colourful language.

George went up to King's College, Cambridge in 1912 and Peter was about to follow when war was declared. He was at the OTC camp at Mytchett Farm and when it was turned out he hurried to Scotland where George and the rest of his brothers had joined Barrie for a fishing holiday. In his hand he was brandishing a circular from the adjutant of the Cambridge University OTC, ‘pointing out that it was the obvious duty of all undergraduates to offer their services'. Dutifully, that night the two brothers boarded a train going south.

To say that every young man in Britain was dying to join the army would be an exaggeration. George and Peter would be partly buoyed by their fellow passengers. They sat in a carriage full of reservists overflowing with a ‘pack up your troubles' mentality, but it had begun to ebb by the time they were redirected to the rifle depot at Winchester. George had served in the ECOTC too but never took it seriously, which was a common sentiment before the war. He joked about his awful shooting and was more vocal about the ‘topping rag' on the way back to school in the train than serious military matters, although he thought it was all rather fun ‘seeing an enemy skulking along about 500 yards off, and potting at him'.

Peter had ‘odd sensations' in the pit of his stomach as they climbed the hill from the station. George had a funny turn outside, ‘something between a fainting fit and a sick headache' and had to sit down and pull himself back together outside the barracks. Peter was all for running away back to London ‘humiliated but free', but George took a deep breath, steadied himself and marched them both through the door.

When George and Peter entered the rifle depot they found themselves face to face with a lieutenant colonel who appeared to be busy and showed little interest in their presence. Where were they at school? Eton. Were they in the corps? Yes. Did they play games? As soon as he established that George was
the
Davies who had made that 59 at Lord's in 1912 in front of his very eyes, for his old school, this fellow OE who himself had been in the XI changed his tune and immediately became more congenial. Peter met his approval by way of being related to George and with that, they were in the army.

When George and Peter reported to Sheerness to join the King's Royal Rifle Corps in September it was in a depressed mood. They watched baby-faced officers being sent off to replace those who had fallen in the early days of the war and as they undressed in their tent to go to bed that first night, George said: ‘Well, young Peter, for the first time in our lives we're up against something really serious. F*** me if we aren't.'

Life in the Intelligence Corps had not been entirely plain sailing for George Fletcher, even if he was far removed from the action he craved. He had been grazed by shrapnel during the retreat but it could have been far more serious. ‘A man a few yards off was biffed … I stole his Greatcoat which kept me alive.' He had even been arrested. One night he was rattling along on his smell when he ran into a party of Germans. Thinking quickly, he started chattering away in German and they failed to notice that he was not one of them. Unfortunately for George he was overheard by a British contingent lurking nearby and dragged off for incarceration as a spy. There he sat until a fellow OE chanced by and asked him what the devil he was doing locked up.

In fact, George had become so tired of motorcycles and of intelligence work that he had been ‘touting' to every staff officer he could get within earshot to try to secure a transfer to an infantry battalion. George was attached to the 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers. ‘Henceforth I march on my feet like a man instead of scorching on my tail like a monkey.' He had arrived in time for the beginning of the battle for Ypres in October but they occupied a section of the line to the south, away from where Regie was involved in the thick of the action. George was still unaware of his brother's death when he and his men were pulled from the lines in November. He set to work shaving off the scratchy beard that had grown in the fortnight spent in a cramped, makeshift ditch.

As the snow began to fall the men of the BEF who had survived the slaughter got ready for a winter of inactivity as far as large-scale battles were concerned. George sat ‘begloved and bemittened', wearing every item of clothing he possessed at once, draped in all of the blankets that he could find. He was convinced that he and his men would remain where they sat until the following March. ‘We shall stay facing one another in trenches the whole weary winter,' he suggested to his parents, ‘and in the Spring, we shall go for them.' If this was the case, then the lines hurriedly scraped into the earth as the battle had raged around them simply wouldn't do as accomodation.

One of the first priorities was to make a solid bottom to the trenches, by whatever means possible in the worsening conditions; be it brushwood, bricks, sacks of straw, timbers or ammunition crates. The digging of communicating trenches was also important so that the men could move to and from the firing line in safety. George was in a trench only 100 yards or so away from the Germans, so barbed wire entanglements were especially vital to keep the enemy out of their lines. George was trying to construct a dugout. He had an old door as a roof, which leaked; three more forming walls with the last side made out of ammunition crates. The entrance was hung with a waterproof sheet and he had found a long box to act as a bed and stuffed it full of straw and blankets. As yet, trench was an elaborate description for their home. They lacked a parapet to shield them and the addition of one of these was absolutely vital, as any attempt to dig down brought more water into the trench. Any attempts they were making to pave the floor with bricks were useless as they just sank into the thick, glutinous mud.

On his 27th birthday George was supervising the construction of a communication trench that filled up with water as soon as they dug it. It had rained continually for over a week and when he tried to walk to and fro the water nearly went over the top of his gumboots. He had been tying them on with webbing straps so that they did not get left behind when he lifted his feet but it was a losing battle. By the end of January pumps had arrived to bale out the trenches. The worst of it was that the water had nowhere to go, wherever it landed on the clay-like soil, it stayed. They had taken to pumping it out of one trench and into an old communication trench which had been barricaded with sandbags, but no matter what the men of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers tried, the water found a way to trickle back in.

The amount of mud shocked new arrivals. Ian Henderson left Eton in the summer that war was declared and subsequently joined the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders who were in the same brigade as George Fletcher's battalion. Still a teenager, he was cloaked with a sometimes painful naivety. The crossing was wonderful, the men were wonderful, the weather fine and all was dandy until ‘beastly shells' turned up and put him in ‘the most awful funk'. In one of his letters home he admitted to an ‘awful discovery' he hoped that they wouldn't be shocked, but he had found
two
lice in his vest, and he was not the only one. ‘I haven't had my shirt off for eight days now or my boots. And terrible to think of, I haven't had a bath for very nearly a month.'

On 11 November George reported that his feet had been wet for three days despite his new habit of rubbing vaseline all over them to try and keep the water out of his skin. His men had stood in a trench for three days. With almost nowhere to lie down and rest they spent day and night trying to bale out the trench with buckets only to see the water find its way back in. The men with the buckets were exposed all day long to German rifles, ‘but they, poor things were just as badly off'. It had created a sort of uneasy truce. They did not snipe at the Germans whilst they battled the water and vice versa.

One young woman who knew George Llewelyn Davies well said of her own Etonian brother, who would be killed in May 1915 with the 19th Hussars, that he thought the war was going to be ‘one long cavalry charge, everyone waving their swords – Smash the Kaiser! Terrific!'
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George Davies was never, she knew, under any such illusions. ‘He knew what he was in for from the word go.' In early December the brothers had been separated. Peter, still seventeen, was left at Sheerness whilst George was sent to the 4th Rifle Brigade. The battalion had arrived home from India in preparation for being sent to war and he was to go with them. Leaning out of the train as it pulled from the station, George waved goodbye to his younger brother, calling out ‘Till our next merry meeting!'

George was subsisting with holes in his pants almost as soon as he arrived at the front but that was the least of his concerns. He had had a harrowing walk up to the trenches one night through thick mud in complete darkness. He was bringing up the rear and accidentally found his way into a silent, abandoned communication trench. He waded into mud up to his knees. There, unsteady and perhaps with a hint of panic setting in, he toppled over backwards. ‘Behold me sitting with exceedingly cold water trickling into me everywhere, unable to move and shouting for help.' Another OE had told a similar, horrific story of a ‘missing' man who had vanished whilst relieving troops one night. They assumed that he had stopped a stray bullet in the dark. Two days later when the same men came out of the trenches they heard groans coming from a waterlogged communication trench. They found the missing man up to his shoulders in mud. He had got lost and sank. It took them more than four hours to extract him and get him help but he died of shock and exposure almost immediately.

The spectre of death was always lurking in the trenches. The men of George Fletcher's battalion used to sit discussing the spirits of dead men. They used to say that when the war was over, the ghosts of dead troops would be marching over their fields every night ‘cursing and grousing' as they were moving along and that no farmer would be able to use the land again. They talked about whether or not the soldiers already claimed by the war could wander through space and look down upon them. One of their number was dry in his response when he replied that he ‘wouldn't mind betting' that at that very moment they were looking down and ‘dancing a two step and clicking their heels together in holy glee to think that they had scrounged out of this blasted misery'.

Dead, rotting men were turned up all over the Ypres Salient area when troops tried to drain or extend their lines. Many were in an advanced state of decomposition and the smell was harrowing. George Fletcher was sat right across from a turnip field that was full of dead Germans and he told one of the other Eton masters that it required ‘heartiness' to see every day the remains of human beings laying face down on the ground ‘in lumps and rows' right opposite where they slept and ate. The smell reminded them that they were there even if they could not see them.

Life was cheap. Just because there was no fighting going on, it did not entirely remove the threat of death. George talked about four consecutive sergeants getting ‘biffed in the head' by sniper fire in a short space of time and shell fire still accounted for the lives of many. Every now and again something brought home to the OEs in the front lines that it was a human life like their own that they were referring to. George Davies went to great lengths to shield ‘Uncle Jim' from the horrors that he was enduring, but he wrote home on one occasion of having seen ‘violent death' just a few feet from him. He had been underneath a parapet when a man had exposed his head to a German rifle and George watched the top of his head taken off. ‘I oughtn't write about these things … but it made an impression.' Just four days later Barrie replied and informed him that his uncle, Guy Du Maurier, had been killed a few miles up the line. He urged, begged George to stay safe. ‘I don't have any little desire for you to get military glory … You would not mean a featherweight more to me [if] you come back a General. I just want yourself.' He ended on a desperate note. ‘I have lost all sense of war being glorious, it is just unspeakably monstrous to me now.' At home on leave, Peter watched Barrie walking up and down in his room, ‘smoking pipe after pipe, thinking his dire thoughts'.