Original Letter
France.
8th April, 1918.
My Dearest Maidie:–
I have just finished my supper and we had “silver lining” pudding! That’s what the cook called it although why he called it that I don’t know. It was just a very ordinary kind of a pudding made out of issue biscuits and no one would be tempted to exceed the greed limit by it. Our cook, “Smokey” is toujours on the job with the jest and I always enjoy getting my meals from him far more than I enjoy the meals. When I asked him what was in the pudding he said “sh-h-! its a military secret”.
Last night I got your April first letter – say, by the way who was it who once put the clock on an hour and had me flying around in the middle of the night? Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Turk was at the Base on his way back from leave and very busy he was kept dodging parades. One morning the bugle blew and they got orders to fall in for pay. Anxious for a few scads Turkey fell in smartly. They were marched out and given physical drill for two hours! It was some time afterwards before Turk discovered that he was a poisson d’avril.
Its pretty great about you loving me on April first, Dear. Its a sign, you know. If you love me on the first of April you will love me all the month – at least I know that is the way it has been with me for ever so many Aprils – as many as fourteen. I think that I saw you first in 1903. or first saw you, anyway I have loved you an awful lot of Aprils but I can’t remember one when I loved you so much as this.
Turkey could not get that book “Under Fire” in Paris. It was ‘off’ all sold out but I am negotiating for a read at it. One of the officers has it and has promised to lend it to me. It is written about a part of the country that we here are very familiar with and I think that some of the writer’s arguments re war are very familiar to me – very similar to your own. The only drawback to your arguments against war is that enough people haven’t got them. I am sure that if anyone had known how frightful modern warfare would be that this war would never have been fought. I know one who wouldn’t have any way. By far the frightfullest thing is being away from you. All the rest – his H.E. his gas, his 75 milers are only irritations compared to that. I had a note from Charley Holmes last night. He says “God has been very good to us – the Kaiser hasn’t let him throw anything at our Horse Lines”. I cannot find out where Mac is – we aren’t allowed to tell each other in letters but one of these days I expect we will run across each other. I do want to see Mac, he will be very disgusted with this war, I know.
But there is only one person in the world I want to see – much – and you have only one guess as to who that is. She is good looking and red headed, just the right size, kind, thoughtful, witty, sweet, pleasant and clever – you must have guessed by now. She is lots of other nice things too. You are a wonderful baby, you know, Sweetheart, and do you know that I love you so much to-day that I have had to oil my pulse because it was running hot? Its true. I adore you, Dearest.
Your mari
Ross
75 miler
- Note
- Krupp, a German arms manufacturer (now ThyssenKrupp), made “Big Bertha” and the “Paris gun” (the two are often confused with each other). Big Bertha was a howitzer used from the beginning of the war. And the Paris gun (so called because it could actually shell Parish from the German battlefield positions) was a massive (42 cm) mortar with a range of 130 km (over 80 miles) — the largest piece of artillery used during WWI.
The Paris gun was used from March to August 1918, so this is probably the weapon to which Ross is referring.
Sources: “1917 Development of a long-barrel gun with 130 km range (“Paris gun”),” ThyssenKrupp home page, www.thyssenkrupp.com/en/konzern/geschichte_chronik_k1917.html; “Big Bertha (Howitzer),” Absolute Astronomy, www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Big_Bertha_%28Howitzer%29; “Paris Gun,” Absolute Astsronomy, www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Paris_Gun.
See also: Henry W. Miller, The Paris Gun: The Bombardment of Paris by the German Long Range Guns and the Great German Offensive of 1918 (New York: Jonathan Cape, Harrison Smith, 1930); Gerald V. Bull, Charles H. Murphy, Paris Kanonen: The Paris Guns (Wilhelmgeschutze) and Project HARP (Herford: E. S. Mittler, 1988); Ian V. Hogg, The Guns 1914–18 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971). - Links & References
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Charley Holmes
- About Quarter Master Sergeant Charles B. Holmes
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Under Fire
- Note
- Ross is probably referring to the novel La Feu (published in English as Under Fire) by the French writer Henri Barbusse. The book’s entry on Amazon.com tells us that it is “a powerful account of one of the greatest horrors mankind has inflicted on itself.” The novel is based on Barbusse’s own time serving with French army, in which he fought for 17 months (from 1914 to 1915) before being moved to a desk job due to illness. By the time Le Feu was published in 1916, Barbusse had become a passionate pacifist.
“Reminiscent of classics like Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Under Fire ... vividly evokes life in the trenches—the mud, stench, and monotony of waiting while constantly fearing for one’s life in an infernal and seemingly eternal battlefield” (Amazon.com).
Sources: “Under Fire (Penguin Classics),” Amazon.com, www.amazon.com/Under-Penguin-Classics-Henri-Barbusse/dp/0143039040, accessed 18 June 2007; “Henri Barbusse,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Barbusse, accessed 22 October 2009. - Links & References
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Turkey
- About Sergeant Lawson Turcotte
- A fellow NCO in Ross’s battalion. Of all the men in the battalion, Turkey seems to have been the one Ross worked with most closely in the course of his duties.
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Paris
- Note
- Paris is mentioned frequently in the letters, since it is the central point of the railway system; all travel in France goes through Paris. Mary accompanied Ross to Paris when he was going to the front initially and again after his leave in Bernay.
Although the flavour of Paris as a charming and cosmopolitan city is well known, in wartime Paris had a very particular character, which is captured by the American journalist, William Beebe, in his June 1918 article, “A Naturalist in Paris,” in Atlantic Monthly:In these days when the very life and existence of individuals and nations are at hair-trigger poise, it is well to have lived in Paris and at the Front. One longs to be in both places at once. Yet there is a veritable monotony of excitement in the first lines: we can kill in only a certain number of ways, and one has a fixed number of limbs and organs to be injured. But behind the lines, in Paris, the ways of living, of physical and mental healing, of readjustment, of temporary despair and sorrow, of eternal hope, of selfishness and altruism – these are myriad in number and wholly absorbing in interest. ...
Walking along the boulevards of Paris one feels somehow as if one had slipped back into mediaeval times, the emphasis of color and ornament is so reversed. Almost every man is clad in bright hues, or with some warm splash or stripe, and most are adorned with medals and citations. So many women are in dark colors, if not in crape, that one’s thought of their costumes in general is of sombreness of hue.
... One’s geography of Paris would read: the city is bounded on the north by supply dépôts, on the south by hospitals, and on the west by aerodromes. Its principal imports and exports are bandages, crape, wooden legs, and Colonials; its products are war-bread, war-literature, faith, and hope.
Source: “William Beebe: World War One Witness (The Atlantic Monthly, 1918),” old magazine articles.com, http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/pdf/Naturalist-in-Paris%20Pt.pdf, accessed 12 February 2008. - Contribute to the Project
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