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Denis Oliver Barnett: In Happy Memory. His Letters from France & Flanders October 1914-August 1915.
1st Ed., xi+238pp., 243x173mm, portrait frontis., 3 plates. Privately Printed in a numbered limited edition of 150 copies.
1915
#69294
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Denis Oliver ("Dobbin") Barnett was born in 1895, left St Paul's School in 1914 as Captain of School, with a scholarship to Balliol; instead of going up to Oxford straightaway he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles and was in France with them in October; commissioned in the Leinster Regiment in January 1915 and promoted to Lieutenant in June. Served with 2nd Battalion in the Armentières sector and the Ypres Salient until wounded at Hooge on 15th August 1915 with "A" Company. He died of wounds the following day, aged twenty, and is buried at Poperinghe New Military Cemetery. Contains most interesting and entertaining letters throughout his active service, with much amusement at the antics and expressions of his Irishmen ("Apparently about half the regiment is called Paddy, and the other half Micky, and they all write to Bridget! They are real performing Irishmen from Tipperary, Cork, and so on… They are very good men, and keep their rifles very well… They will only obey their own officers… but they make magnificent fighters… Of course drunkenness is the main crime…") On one occasion Barnett, "Visited the soldiers-under-arrest, as they are called in Army Orders, and asked for complaints. Private Sherry wanted clean under-clothes! Of course I knew he'd sold them for drink, so I told him to try the pawnbrokers. Loud cheers from the guard and the other prisoners. Collapse of Private Sherry…" The earlier letters are written in the light-hearted spirit of the early-war period, but they gradually give way to a grim determination. In January 1915 it was all a great game, in spite of the obvious dangers: "By day they sniped a good deal… We signalled their shots with a long soup-ladle thing, which we use for baling – it's just like the thing they use on the range in England. Then we put a hat on the soup-ladle and they hit that; so we just held the whole business up high, and let them see their bag, and they were so fed up that they ceased to fire for a bit. Some Scotchmen on our left began playing bagpipes, and the Germans were so exasperated with this dastardly method of warfare that they turned a maxim [gun] on, and the noise ceased… It is some game being an officer. We had china plates and so on in the trenches, and top-hole food… It's a cushey life nowadays and I love it." By June the novelty was wearing off, and shell-shortage was evidently an issue of concern: "One of our guns fired a shot yesterday. Someone will be cashiered for that. I expect they were cleaning it, and it went off on them. Meanwhile the German guns never stop pounding away, day and night, always on some target or other, whether its on the trenches or something way behind. That makes a man feel rather vicious sometimes. I hope to God there will be a change soon."Orig. rust cloth, gilt, VG & rare, No. 86 of 150 numbered copies, inscribed "J.W. Gould Jan. 1916 from P.A. Barnett."
£275
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