Remembrance, continued

 

"Watch me make a fire-bucket of 'is 'elmet."

 

Not all of Bairnsfather's comics are of the lighter side of the war, at least not to our eyes. The men were subtly changed as the war dragged on, and what was once unthinkable and not to be spoken of would become common and even grimly humorous. Canadian officer Agar Adamson (born to a wealthy family not far from my old home was a rare bird who served almost from the beginning to almost the very end of the war. He wrote letters home to his wife every day, and those letters are a common source of information for historians and directors of documentaries on the war. Originally he hid from his wife the horrors of what he was witnessing, but as time wore on, he would casually write of what he saw. In one famous letter, he wrote of the death of friend and comrade Talbot Papineau. Papineau and Adamson had been standing together waiting to go over the top at Passchendaele. They were quickly separated, but a few minutes later Adamson and a friend found the remains (which was a more accurate word in this case than most) of a man whose entire body from the waist up had been blown away. The two men noted that the puttees on the legs had been tied in a distinctive fashion that Papineau used, and, searching the man's pockets, they discovered that this was indeed all that was left of their friend. Adamson then signed off his letter 'ever thine, Agar.'