12 November 1917
The Lord and all the Holy Saints be praised! After all the exhausting uncertainty of the last few months, we did finally today take possession of Bracketts. There is an infinite amount still to be done, but I insisted that Mrs Heggarty make up the beds in Sonia and my rooms, so that we can spend the first night of what I pray will be many happy ones in this blessed spot. When the rest of the servants arrive tomorrow, we will set about making the place habitable. I’m sure that over the next few months when the builders start their works, we will have to spend many nights in the Crown Inn at South Stapley, but at least for today, Bracketts is ours. It is a source of great pleasure to me that there is a cunningly hidden and complex Priest’s Hole here,a sign that for many years this has been a home to good Catholics. I have asked Father Ternan to come over tomorrow to bless the house. Here we will put our griefs behind us, and look forward to however much more life God in His wisdom sees fit to grant us. Thanks be to Him for this day!
So Graham Chadleigh had never lived at Bracketts. His young life had been cut short in the Flanders mud before his family took possession of the house.
This seemed to be confirmed by the photocopy of an undated letter written in an uneducated hand.
Dear Mr Chadleigh,
I’m writing to you at the request of my commanding officer who had a request from Lieutenant Strider for anyone who witnessed what happened to his men on 26th October 1917 at Passchendaele. I was there on stretcher duty that day and bringing a wounded man back from the front over near Houthulst Forest when I saw Lieutenant Strider. I recognized him because I’d stretchered off a couple of his men during the big push on 12th October. On the 26th he was advancing at the head of maybe twenty men. It was hard to tell what with the rain and fog but they went past us on the duckboards what had been laid over the mud.
They’d only just gone past us and we wasn’t no more than a hundred yards behind them when a German shell landed and blew us off our feet. It put paid to the poor blighter on our stretcher and my mate got a big lump of shrapnel in his back. I was pretty shook up but thank the Lord not more than a bit brused.
When I managed to get up and look back towards the German lines, it was like the whole landscape had changed. When the smoke cleared I could see this huge crater, which was already filling up with water and mud. Where the duckboards had been there was nothing. Where Lieutenant Strider’s men had been there was nothing. They must have took a direct hit. I heard later that Lieutenant Strider himself survived, though badly wounded. I reckon that must’ve been because he was far enough ahead of his men leading by example to miss the full force of the blast.
But the others in that mud I don’t think they’ll ever be found. And if as I hear your son was one of them, I’m very sorry. No one could have survived that.
I wish I didn’t have to write what I’m writing, but I’ve been told you want to know the truth and that’s what I’m writing. I’m sorry I didn’t know your son and can’t give no personal memories of him, but I hope it will be a comfort to you to know that he died bravely, facing the Boche. And now the War’s going our way and victory’s in site, you can be sure that your son did his bit for King and Country.
With condolences,
Yours truly,
J. T. Hodges (Private)
The fourth document Carole read seemed to be a draft for an essay, or a piece of journalism. Even if the upwards-slanting handwriting had not given it away, she had still heard enough about Esmond Chadleigh since she had become a Trustee to recognize the tub-thumping, populist style.
HEROISM
In these diminished days, what need do we have for heroes? Does the wage-slave travelling in the clockwork regularity of his train from dusty office to leafy suburb still have need for anyone to look up to? Do young working men, their minds full of the newest craze – wondering which greyhound chasing a mechanical hare can make their fortunes – ever dream of aspiring to heroism? Do young women, the brains inside their bobbed heads full only of the cacophony which goes by the name of ‘jazz’, look for more solid qualities in a potential suitor than his pecuniary ability to buy a solitaire engagement ring? Do the deeds of Drake or Marlborough, Nelson or Wellington no longer strike any resonating chord in the tone-deaf ears of today’s Britain?
I devoutly hope they still do. It is hardly yet ten years since the end of the greatest conflict ever witnessed on this poor benighted planet, hardly ten years since David Lloyd George, positing the question: ‘What is our task?’, came up with the resounding answer: ‘To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.’ And has the great Welsh Wizard’s task been accomplished? Or have we forgotten? Have we let our minds fill up to the brim with the newer wonders of the age – motor-cars and telephones for every man-jack of us, trains impelled along their rails by electricity rather than steam, and cinemas in which the actors can be heard to speak aloud, murmuring endearments which will be thought by each shopgirl to be meant for her ears alone?
By George, I hope we haven’t! Heroes are no less important to a society than are gods. As the Almighty provides us with a pattern to which we can aspire but never attain, heroes are closer to our capabilities, they are gods with human faces. Nelson was a mere mortal – and a sickly one at that – yet in the boiling seas of Trafalgar he triumphed over the might of Napoleon. Only a man, but what a man! Oh yes, we need heroes.
I had the good fortune to know a hero, to know him well when I was a boy, and in him I found the qualities of manliness and good judgement on which I have tried to model my subsequent life.
The hero I know was a man called Lieutenant Hugo Strider. He was a friend of my father, and before 1914 shared with him those pursuits of fur and feather and fish with which the gentlemen of that long-gone age were wont to fill their leisure hours. But come the clarion call to arms, Hugo Strider, without a backward glance, gave up the pampered indolence of his former life, and turned all his mighty energies to the business of soldiering.
He was a fine officer, fierce in the face of the enemy, firm but compassionate amongst his own. Hugo Strider was loved by his men, who knew that he would never send them on a mission he was not prepared to face himself.
I had many reasons to know of his kindness, not least because he cut through the niceties of army regulations to ensure that my brother Graham could join his own regiment. I myself, then a bellicose stripling of some thirteen summers, tried to cajole him into making the same arrangements for me, but Lieutenant Strider wisely dissuaded me from such ambition. Not only would I be breaking the law, but a brat like me would also, as he told me with gentle firmness, be a perishing nuisance in the heat of battle!
My brother Graham did not survive the war. He gave his life to sustain the freedoms that we now enjoy – even if some of the denizens of this fine country use that hard-won precious freedom only to listen to jazz music! I am confident that my brother showed a degree of heroism, but I know for a fact of the heroism that was shown by Lieutenant Strider. He was the only survivor of the push at Passchendaele in which my brother died. At the head of his men, while behind him lives ended in the savage suddenness of shellfire, Lieutenant Strider was as good as his name and, oblivious to the fatal bullets and shellfire which filled the air, strode on towards the enemy lines.