An officer’s unfinished letter

On this day: Oct 16 1915

The following is an unfinished letter written to his relatives by Lieut MWM Windle, of the 8th Devon Regiment, whose death was reported in The Times on Thursday. It was picked up by an officer in the first German trench at Loos after that had been captured: Sept 24, 1915. Supper is over, my pack is ready, and we don’t parade for another hour, so I’ll pass the time by starting this letter, which I hope I may have a chance of finishing later. We are moving up tonight into the trenches from which we are going to attack tomorrow morning. We moved here last night, and all day long have been listening to the biggest cannonade I’ve yet heard. I wish I could give you some idea of it. The sound that preponderates is like the regular thump of a steamship’s engines, while the shells as they pass moan like the wind in the trees. Tomorrow it will be twice as loud, excepting during the last few minutes before we go over the parapet. Then, I suppose, machine-guns and rifles and bombs will swell the chorus. We have about 200 yards to go before we reach their first trenches. I hope that won’t present much difficulty, and if the guns have any luck we should top the hill all right. After that there are at least two more systems of defence, each about 1,000 yards apart which it will be up to us to tackle. I wonder whether we shall do it? One can hardly imagine what it will be like. I think Aristotle has something apposite about it, but I can’t remember now. Anyway this — viz, letter-writing — is a great relief. You get so interested in your conditions that they cease to annoy you. But to return to the classics. Thucydides is a gentleman whose truth I never appreciated so thoroughly before. In his description of the last great effort of the Athenians to break out of Syracuse he tells how the officers lectured and encouraged their men right up to the last moment, always remembering another last word of counsel, and wishing to say more, yet feeling all the time that however much they said it would still be inadequate. Just the same with us now. We’ve all lectured our platoons, but something still keeps turning up, and after all we can only play an infinitesimal part in Armageddon!