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Emotional Partings

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Emotional Partings 2 Emotional partings Bidding farewell to his older brother as he embarked on the first stage of his journey to the Western Front was, according to Pat Campbell, ‘the unhappiest parting I have ever experienced’. Only on the cusp of leave-taking did Pat appreciate the enormity of what his brother faced. Nearly sixty years later, the sight of a departing train still had the power to disturb him.1 Trauma experts Charles Figley and William Nash assert that deployment to the war zone is a ‘transformative process’ for everyone involved.2 Even the familiar terrain of the railway platform took on a heightened intensity amid the whirlwind of mobilisation. Strangers joined with intimates to see off loved ones. Such moments can be seen as theatre or specta- cle, belying their emotional import as testified by their prevalence in sibling narratives.3 Caught up in the initial novelty, siblings expe- rienced and recorded a range of emotional responses. As the war progressed, the cumulative effects of saying goodbye took their toll on those left at home. Sibling narratives reveal varied responses to appeals to serve their country, supplementing existing evidence challenging the myth of war enthusiasm.4 Bewilderment and dread were common emotions, in stark contrast to the jingoism that greeted the Boer War.5 Nicola Martin challenges the chronology of the reconceptualisation of heroic masculinity, arguing that this underwent a sea-change long before the Armistice.6 Fraternal narratives offer up an even earlier starting point. From the outset, men’s fears for their brothers’ and their families’ wellbeing and economic prosperity present a more nuanced picture of masculinity. Many saw no shame in not fighting. Siblings felt anxiety as their brothers enlisted, were conscripted Linda Maynard - 9781526146151 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/24/2021 02:12:51PM via free access Emotional partings 111 or faced losing exemptions from service. Some brothers mitigated these emotions through acts of enlisting with, or serving alongside, their siblings. Departing for war Even when men willingly volunteered, combat was a daunting prospect. After he volunteered in August 1914, Percy Campbell’s underlying anxieties were apparent to his brother, casting a shadow across their last family holiday. Pat recorded the diurnal pattern of Percy’s tension: I noticed that Percy was reading the paper more than usual, the war news, and that he did not go down to the beach until the post had come in. When it had come, and had brought no official envelope for him, then he seemed his old self again for the rest of the day.7 With enlistment imminent, any news of war had particular perti- nence for Percy. Uncertainty over the timing of his departure piqued his anxiety. In response, he braced himself in isolation. Writing in 1972, a reworking of the landscape of childhood memories coloured Pat’s recollections of that holiday.8 A shift in emotional norms registered in his memory. The siblings were, by that summer, well versed in the separations occasioned by attendance at public school and university. Traditionally, their annual break would have been a time to reforge familial ties. Unable to place that summer’s events within this familiar context, Pat retrospectively ascribed meaning to the feelings of puzzlement experienced in August 1914. Many partings took place at railway stations, ‘the closest point of contact’ between London (and other points of departure) and the war.9 At this interface, Gregory writes, traditional social and famil- ial roles could be shed.10 But, as these narratives show, relationships were also reaffirmed at these transitional places. Bruce Cummings went to Waterloo station to see his brother Arthur depart ‘en route for Armageddon’. Gallows humour was not restricted to the front line; those waiting at home took comfort in its ability to make fears about the prospect of death more manageable.11 The ironic tone infusing Cummings’ account dissolves in his account Linda Maynard - 9781526146151 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/24/2021 02:12:51PM via free access 112 Brothers in the Great War of their parting. Arthur held his brother’s hand, briefly giving him ‘a queer little nervous look’. The brothers’ ‘perfect’ understanding rendered the need for words redundant. Bruce encapsulated his feelings in two short sentences. ‘It is horrible. I love him tenderly.’12 Bringing the delicate quality of tenderness to his definition of frater- nal love, Bruce captured his desire to protect his brother against the terrors ahead. The contrast between this and his earlier insouciance towards those same terrors underscores the tentative gentleness of this brotherly parting. Journalist Cecil Hewitt recalled the ‘indelibly, distressing’ day when his older brother Harold left for the front line. Sixteen- years old, Cecil was ‘severely shaken’ to see his distraught father embrace Harold in tears, ‘as though they were both foreigners’. Such a public exhibition contradicted Cecil’s understanding of appropriate masculine behaviour. Repressing tears was a mark of character embedded in the English ‘stiff upper lip’ tradition.13 His father, Frederick Hewitt, a City of London police inspector, was ‘a carefully respectable’ man. Orphaned at ten, Frederick completed his education at the Royal Military Asylum for the sons of regular army officers. Throughout their childhood, he showed his children a nuanced awareness of lower-middle-class Christian values. Certainly, his profession and upbringing suggest a usually phlegmatic demeanour.14 Harold’s embarkation occurred after the Third Battle of Ypres and the concomitant casualty lists. Fear of his son’s chances of survival contributed to Frederick’s discomposure. Shedding of tears, after all, does not simply indicate a symptom or sign of sadness but encompasses a spectrum of emotions.15 Unlike filial characterisations of overwhelming paternal grief as mani- festing ‘diminished masculinity’, emotional collapses by fathers or brothers are recounted by many siblings with sympathetic neutrality.16 His father’s breakdown amplified Cecil’s status as a bystander, observing the ‘strangeness’ of the heightened passion on display. Witnessing this emotional farewell jolted Cecil into the realisation that he might never see his brother again.17 Departures for war could be the source of emotional distress for much younger brothers. Not only did they experience the pain of separation themselves but they witnessed the disquietude that these departures caused to close family relatives. The poet Geoffrey Linda Maynard - 9781526146151 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/24/2021 02:12:51PM via free access Emotional partings 113 Grigson, the youngest of seven brothers, bemoaned his elderly father’s misfortune in having ‘war ripe’ children; five of his brothers died in the First and Second World Wars.18 There are no official sta- tistics on sets of brothers who died in the Great War, but research places the Grigsons among those families experiencing the greatest losses.19 In his 1950 autobiography, Grigson remembered the day his brother Lionel left for France. The tenor of Grigson’s response suggests that he had absorbed the mood of anxiety and sorrow circulating in the wider household. When Lionel found Grigson in a state of misery, ‘blubbering and heaving and afraid’, he pulled him into a comforting embrace. Geoffrey remembered feeling ‘the bucket and sinners of [Lionel’s] Sam Browne [belt]’. This tactile memory signified a barrier between the siblings, marking Lionel’s transformation into his army identity. Both brothers experienced this as an emotionally charged separation. Betraying his attempts at reassurance, Lionel’s eyes filled with ‘large tears’. Writing nearly thirty-five years later, Grigson could not ‘remember a much intenser agony’.20 Other family send-offs attest to the novelty of the experience. When the Dodsworth sisters set off on the first stage of their journey to the No. 12 General Hospital, Rouen, the family group included their stepmother, brother, sister-in-law, sister and family friends. Among the group, only their sister Do was visibly upset, despite doing her utmost to control her emotions.21 Leaving for Egypt for their second stint of overseas service, Kit Dodsworth recalled the ‘sorrow and fear’ permeating the railway platform at Victoria, ‘cloaked by smiles and jests’. The heart-breaking attempts of the surrounding people to hide their emotions transformed the termi- nus into a ‘sacred place’ infused with sadness.22 Joined by circum- stance, strangers, friends and family members were gathered into an ad hoc emotional community, one that gained piquancy from the shared knowledge of risks facing the departing, the grief of those who had already suffered loss and the value vested in the effort of self-restraint by those witnessing acts of emotional labour.23 The turbulence of familial leave-taking could prove trying for combatants, a fact recognised by their siblings. Percy Cearns recalled the gendered tactility of his family’s goodbyes when seeing Fred off at Victoria station. His sisters hugged and kissed their Linda Maynard - 9781526146151 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/24/2021 02:12:51PM via free access 114 Brothers in the Great War brother, while the male family members exchanged a handshake. The latter was not an emotionally dry act; Percy conveyed the underlying emotion through his emphasis, ‘how we shook hands’. Turning away, Fred betrayed his taut emotional control through a clenching of his teeth.24 Naomi Mitchison recalled going ‘as a family’ to Southampton to see her brother off. Her dread that this might be a final goodbye, combined with the ‘putting on’ of a brave face by her parents, must, she later reflected, have been ‘very trying’ for Jack.25 These gradations of emotional restraint signal the effort involved in hiding emotions and their partial failure. The ‘pretence’ of the brave face, combined with an intimate knowledge of the feel- ings being repressed, added to the stress of departing combatants.
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