Journey's End Presentation for Claire Buck's Senior Seminar, Fall 2014.

1. Robert Sherriff Letters
Journey’s End Document
Source
http://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/category/rcs/

2. From Sherriff to his father:
I am very sorry indeed to hear that Dick Webb
and Restall have both been killed, they were
two of my earliest school friends, and friends I
kept right up till and after the outbreak of war
– I knew Webb since I first went to the
Grammar School when I was seven years old,
and Restall about a year after. Yet these are
things that cannot but be expected, and
although they do not depress you it makes you
feel all the more the hateful uselessness of the
whole thing – there is nothing to do but to bear
everything that fate brings along with the
knowledge that it cannot be prevented –
of course I cannot absolutely realise the loss of
these friends until the time comes when the
whole thing is over, and then is the time when
those who come back will look round and find
that they have got to find new friends to make
up for the old ones. I cannot say how sorry I am
to hear the news about Dick and Restall.

3. From Captain Godfrey Warre-Dymond to Sherriff:
Dear Sherriff
You lucky young beggar getting back home. I do hope you are getting
along really well but just not well enough to come out again this summer.
As I daresay Homewood has told you we had to go up again and had a
good many more wounded. Poor old Sadler died of wounds from I imagine the
same shell that caught you. I and all the others are awfully upset about it and
are so sorry for his poor young wife. As regards what you say about yourself, all I
can say is don’t be a boob and we are all awfully sorry to lose you. However the
thing is to rejoin the Battalion the day before peace is declared.

4. From Sherriff to his father:
Dear Pips,
Here I am on the move again, we are
coming out for a rest and I have
come with the others with a report
from the Doctor whom I have been
visiting, suggesting to our own
Battalion Doctor that my neuralgia
should be “looked into”, the Doctor I
had been visiting thought it may be
due to the straining of the eye
muscles
– I don’t care what it is if only
someone could cure it for me.
The trouble is that it comes on for
about an hour 2 or 3 times a day and
while it is on it makes me feel
absolutely knocked up – when it is
over I feel quite fit
again.

5. P.S.
I do hope I won’t be made to go out
with the girls, as you know I dislike
them…
From Sherriff to his mother:
Now tomorrow up we go into the line again and incidentally away
from everything natural and beautiful –for some days it will be
simply wallowing in mud or perhaps dust with evil smelling holes to
live in which one clings to like a godsend, and all the time there is
the incessant crash of shells – you can imagine how many men like
it –but everyone– that is everyone in the infantry – has to take his
turn and our turn has arrived, still it is of little use to worry, and I
am always thankful that I have my copy of Marcus Aurelius from
which I get a never failing source of comfort.

6. From Sherriff to his father about his servant Morris:
Yesterday he brought in an eat bit of cheese on a plate with the
apologetic remark that the rats has been at it in the night but “I’ve
trimmed it orf where it’s been ate to make some Welsh Rarebit”.
Needless to say we just stopped him in time from using the cheese
which had been ate but he cannot understand to this day why.

7. Similarities to Journey’s End
• Bitterness towards the war
• Loss of friends/filling emotional voids
• Injuries/death (Osborne, Raleigh)
• Neuralgia
• Psychological impact
• Distaste for debauchery on the job
• Trench life
• High vs. Low rank
• Attitude towards war
• Reading reference (Osborne)
• His servant Morris (=Mason)