Brothers, poets and a baptism of fire

Nothing brings home the scale of the casualties of WWI like the stories of individual families who lost the best part of a generation. One of these was the Grenfells, sporting, athletic, aristocrats who were also given to writing poetry, occasionally in Latin. The war’s devastating scourge of their ranks was documented in The Times in a series of letters, poems and obituaries (click on the links to read them in full).

November 4, 1914: Baptism of fire
The following letter, thoroughly characteristic of the pluck and cheerfulness of the young British officer, was received yesterday morning from a cavalry subaltern at the front:

Your two boxes of cigarettes were heaven. We've been in the trenches two days and nights, but no excitements, except a good dose of shrapnel three times a day, which does one no harm, and rather relieves the monotony …

I adore war. It is like a big picnic without the objectlessness of a picnic. I've never been so well or so happy. Nobody grumbles at one for being dirty. I've only had my boots off once in the last 10 days, and only washed twice

The letter did contain glimmers of what real action was like, but still with its larky picnic tone:

I got leave to make a dash across a field, for another farm where they were sniping at us. I could only get half-way, my sergeant was killed, and my corporal hit. We lay down; luckily it was high roots and we were out of sight, but they had fairly got our range, and the bullets kept knocking up the dirt into one's face …
I can't tell you how muddling it is. We did not know which was our front, we did not know if our own troops had come round us on the flanks. or whether they had stopped behind and were firing into us. Four of us were talking in the road when about a dozen bullets came with a whistle. We all dived for the nearest door, and fell over each other, yelling with laughter. ---- said, "I have a bullet through my best new Sandon twillette breeches." We looked, and he had; it had gone clean through. He didn't tell us till two days after that it had gone through him too; but there it was, like the holes you make to blow an egg only about 4in apart

Six months later, the letter’s author made another appearance.

May 28, 1915: The following verses have lately reached us from a young soldier fighting in Flanders. They are signed only with his initials, but we may be permitted now to reveal the fact that they were written by Captain Julian Grenfell, whose death from wounds we regret to record this morning.

Into Battle: read the full poem

The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air Death moans and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.

The obituary, on the same day, recorded that Grenfell was the heir of Lord Desborough, and that the barony would now pass to his brother, Lieutenant the Hon. Gerald William, who was serving in the 8th (Service) Battalion of the Rifle Brigade.

The next day came more terrible news:

May 29, 1915: News has been received in London that Captain Francis Grenfell, VC, of the 9th Lancers, was killed in action last Monday. Captain Grenfell was the first officer in the Army to receive the Victoria Cross in the present war, and has since been twice in England badly wounded. His twin brother, Captain "Rivy " Grenfell, attached to the same regiment, was killed in action on September 14. Only yesterday we recorded the death from wounds of their cousin, Captain Julian Grenfell, DSO, of the Royal Dragoons.
… Both Captain Grenfell and his brother had many devoted friends, and the memory of these two singularly gay and gallant spirits will long be cherished.

A week later, another of Julian Grenfell’s poems was published:

Because of you we will be glad and gay,
Remembering you, we will be brave and strong;
And hail the advent of each dangerous day,
And meet the great adventure with a song ...
Read the full poem here

Then on August 4, it was the turn of Gerald, or “Billy”:

THE HON. G. W. GRENFELL. We regret to learn that Lord Desborough's second son, Second Lieutenant the Hon. Gerald William Grenfell, 8th Rifle Brigade, was killed in action in Flanders on July 31. He was killed instantaneously by machine-gun fire while leading a counter-attack. His elder brother, Captain the Hon. Julian Grenfell, 1st Royal Dragoons, died of wounds at Boulogne on May 26, and his twin cousins, Captain Francis Grenfell, VC, and Captain "Rivy" Grenfell, have both been killed, the former last May and the latter last September

Billy was also a poet:

On May 28, the day on which his death from wounds was announced, we published some remarkable verses written in the trenches by Captain Julian Grenfell. The following lines are a translation from the Latin written by his brother, Mr. G. W. Grenfell, who was killed in action last week, in memory of a friend, also killed in action earlier in the war.
To John
O heart-and-soul and careless played
Our little band of brothers,
And never recked the time would come
To change our games for others ...
Read the full poem here

Into Battle quickly became a classic of war poetry; it was used on the RSPB’s Christmas card in the same year he died, and still appears in anthologies. The Grenfell family’s social prominence made sure that the story of their loss became legend, and it was retold again very recently in a new biography of Ettie Desborough, who not only lost two sons and two nephews in the war, but whose third son died a few years later in a car crash. Osbert Sitwell wrote this appreciation of her when she died in 1952.

In Memoriam: Remembering the Great War
Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London, SE1.
Open daily, 10.00-18.00
Closed: Closed 24-26 December
www.iwm.org.uk

For more on the poets of the First World War visit the War Poetry website

Comments

[Gordon k]

Wow. Ample demonstration that even sensitive, intelligent young men can be brainwashed by their culture into killing and dying like animals.

[Uncle Alan]

Reggie Grenfell, the husband of Joyce Grenfell -- a member of the same family?

[margaret wright]

The photo is of Julian Grenfell.

[Robert Wells Nortopn]

Okay, you win.
Whose photo is it?
I'll shout the cutline if it's that expensive to use cutlines.