LOVE IN THE KILLING FIELDS
It is their in haunting. O Day, we pub letters betw a 21- year-o Lieutenant 17- year-old just a hand going to the the day afte innocence that is so On Remembrance publish the love between ar- old nant and the old girl he met handful of times before t
FApril 1916, Geoffrey is killed while tunnelling under German trenches near Ypres. There is no letter to describe Edith’s grief, only a silence that is more eloquent than words. ‘ At first I was doubtful whether I should make the letters public,’ said Mr Stockwin, who recently retired as professor of modern Japanese studies at Oxford University. ‘ My mother never spoke to me about Geoffrey Boothby, although she did once bring me to meet his mother, without explaining who he was.
‘ She never spoke about the war, but I remember, now, how terribly upset she was whenever she heard the Last Post.
‘ There is something universal about Edith and Geoff’s story, something very, very sad but also very human and life- enhancing.’
After the war, Edith Ainscow
became a paediatrician and then a
medical officer for the city of
Birmingham. She married Mr Stockwin’s father in 1934.
It is rare for the correspondence
between Great War soldiers and their
wives and sweethearts to survive.
Even in this series, Edith’s early
letters are missing.
The letters remind us that this
terrible conflict was fought by young
people with the same everlasting
emotions and hopes as young people
of every generation.
Geoff addresses Edith as ‘ Girl’ or
‘Dear Girl’ or ‘Blue Eyes’ or ‘Golden
Locks’. She addresses him, more
primly, as ‘ Geoff, dear’ but is not
afraid of flirting outrageously in
paper and ink.
If you extract the period slang —
‘ ripping’, ‘ beastly’, ‘ spiffing’, etc —
the letters could be a series of e- mails between undergraduate sweethearts in 2005.
Geoffrey’s attitude to the war darkens as the letters go on. Boyish excitement turns to resigned patriotism.
He believes that he is fighting for the forces of good against ‘ the Unmentionables’, but he becomes angered and depressed by the deaths of ‘nearly all my friends’ in the battles of early 1916. On April 27, 1916, Geoffrey sends Edith a short letter saying he is finally promised leave and ‘ will probably be in Brum somewhere near May 9th with luck’.
After a series of near misses, the pen- pals, who have become penlovers, are to meet at last.
But Second Lieutenant Boothby of the Royal Engineers worked in dark and flooded tunnels under No Man’s Land, trying to blow up German trenches. On April 28, 1916, ‘ eight months after Geoff was first posted to the front, and the day after his last letter’, he was himself blown up by the detonation of a German countertunnel north- east of Ypres.
His body lies ‘ 30- odd feet below Belgium’ to this day. 11 AUGUST, 1915 BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
Dear Girl,
Your suggestion I should tell you how many fair charmers I had writing to me in exchange for the number of lonely soldiers with whom you corresponded is scarcely fair …
We lived in a district for a week that was apparently a dumping place for German shells, they come over from time to time all over the show, but never nearer to your best beloved (or rather one of them) than one field away. Still they give quite a zest to lunch in the open …
In case you are drawing the reverse conclusion, I beg to state that I and the others are thoroughly enjoying ourselves over here. The life is so gorgeously happy-go-lucky that one cannot but be in good spirits …
Cheero! Yrs., No 70. 27 NOVEMBER, 1915 MINING SECTION, BEF
Cheero, Darling, How are you? I’m in fine form, though in the trenches. Muddy from he joi it, try ba H wo wh tu ho
S br ex kn Y ho lim ma re pr W sa
ead to foot and damp in all the ints … I’ve had a mouldy night of
sinking a shaft under the most ying conditions of wet, cold and ad luck. Had two scares. Huns reported orking two yards from our gallery, hich meant yours truly lying on his ummy in sodden clay for half an our and hearing nothing. Second scare that the Boche was reaking into our gallery, so I had to xplore with much shaking at the nees, a revolver and no light … Your suggestion that I should get ome with the dysentery is really the mit. I know you are confoundedly
atter- of- fact in your letters but
ally ‘ dysentery’ how horribly rosaic … What would our grandmothers ay to the modern girl’s letter to her, er, beloved at the front? … Algernon, my best belovedst, How is your stomach? I do hope the Carter’s little liver pills have removed the yellow shade from your beautiful green eyes. I have just heard of a cure for your…(Deleted by Censor)…
Cheero, girl, Geoff 11 DECEMBER, 1915 BEECHCROFT, BIRMINGHAM
(This is the first letter from Edith to survive; presumably the first that Geoff kept. A sign of his growing affection perhaps?) My dear one,
There’s a simply lovely moon tonight and I’m just in the very mood for watching it so please don’t mind if this letter is very daft …
Do tell me what it is you want most out there. I want to know. I promise not to get swell-headed or anything like that, but as you see I can’t promise not to get sentimental as I’ve already got it frightfully badly …
There’s something I want too, oh! so badly, but it’s a secret. I’m afraid it will be the first secret I have ever kept …
Oh, I was forgetting. I’m awfully sorry I gave you such a bad shock by mentioning such a thing as d—- y. But what am I to do? I don’t want you to get wounded and I DO want you to come home now because February is such a long time away …
Goodnight my dear man in khaki, Edith 21 DECEMBER, 1915 MINING SECTION, BEF
Dear Girl,
What a topping letter that last of yours. No, fortunately I wasn’t feeling at all cynical, when I read it, as you feared I might. You must have a curious idea of my character. Cynical! When reading a letter from you! Ye Gods! …
I read under far different, but no less romantic conditions. Thirty- odd feet below the surface of Belgium and somewhat nearer the Huns than the people in the trenches, but the Boche was many a long mile from my mind at that moment …
Your parcel had greater adventures than you possibly expected when you despatched it to the unknown … it was gassed and me with it. Not the really ‘frightful’ kind, but the milder lachrymose shells …
The abominables dropped six in the road in front of me. I was off the mark in fine style, did three hundred yards in record time and got through the worst of it safely … My incomparable ahem, er, Grecian nose had a colour which would put to shame the proboscis of the most seasoned of port wine squires …
Goodbye, Dear Heart,
Geoff 1 JANUARY, 1916 BEECHCROFT, BIRMINGHAM
Dearest,
…this afternoon I gave myself up to dreams. It’s excusable being New Year’s Day, isn’t it? I sat in a big, big armchair, yes perhaps there would have been room for two, in front of a red, red fire and thought and thought and dreamed and dreamed. Have you ever made fire- pictures? … They’re awfully sweet. I think you figured as the ‘ mud- plastered scoundrel’, as you call yourself … a mud-plastered scoundrel, with green eyes, Grecian nose and ruby lips.
‘Sleep, thou darlingest boy of mine, I will rock thee, my child, And guard thee.’
But I forgot it’s you who are guarding us, isn’t it …
Yours, Edith 3 FEBRUARY, 1916 RE, BEF Edith, Dearest, My relief on getting your letters is hardly describable. I wanted to
burst for joy, to fire my revolver
rapidly, to yell in the mines, to go
out and slay half a dozen Huns.
In fact, I experienced the most
perfect joie de vivre imaginable .
I’ve made two attempts to write
to you from the trenches, whence
I have come this very evening,
but I was interrupted both
times. The first was a wire to go
and listen to suspected mining
noises, and the second was to
tie up a wounded officer ...
I tried to console him by saying he’d be in England in no
time but, would you believe it,
he didn’t want to go back, as it
was only his second experience
of trenches. Some people don’t
know when they’re on a good
thing.
Au rev, Darling,
Geoff
27 FEBRUARY 1916 BEECHCROFT, BIRMINGHAM
Geoff, Dearest, … I’ll send you some socks that I’ve just finished … In desperation I nearly knitted the toe of one of them in pink wool but fortunately I eventually got some khaki to match the rest. You would have been annoyed to find one foot pink, wouldn’t you?
Goodbye, my dear one,
Edith 3 MARCH, 1916 RE, BEF
Dearest Girl,
Leave has started again so I’ll be in England at the end of April … I wonder if we’ll see one another this time? … Nearly all my friends in the Staffords have been killed in the fighting round Ypres a few weeks ago. It’s a horribly sad thing how many friendships have been made and broken by this war …
Well. I’m going to bed. Hope I’ll dream of our joint interest in our fathomless chair.
Yrs, Geoff 29 MARCH 1916
Geoff, Dearest,
I’ve got your photo in front of me and I can hardly take my eyes off it even to write to you. I didn’t know anything could make anybody so happy … I’ve been doing nothing but think and dream dreams about it ever since I got it … … please don’t let us wonder what we shall think of one another when we do meet. That sometimes rather frightens me ...
Yrs, Edith 27 APRIL, 1916 TRENCHES
Dearest,
Leave postponed about a week. Will probably be in Brum somewhere near May 9th with luck.
The hope I mentioned is now far stronger. But please don’t build too many castles in the air. I should hate to disappoint again.
Yrs, Geoff
Geoffrey Boothby was killed the day after he wrote this letter.
The Independent, November 10, 2005. Thirty- odd Feet Below Belgium: An Affair Of Letters In The Great War 19151916 is published by Parapress Ltd, £8.99, www.parapress.co.uk.