I can remember my mother and I going for a walk across the fields and talking about it. The reason we were talking about it was the fact that my mother’s youngest brother had been living with us for a few months. Now he was a soldier in the Regular Army, he was Sergeant in the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards and naturally when War was declared his regiment was recalled. He had to leave us and naturally that was the thing that interested us really very much because that was what concerned us and I can remember what we talked about.
It was such a beautiful peaceful evening, course it was holiday time, it was a Bank Holiday and it seemed peaceful there and yet we knew that the fighting was going on, well, only just across the Charnel of course and I can remember how my mother and I talked about it - just how terrible it seemed, although we were excited we’d no idea of course what war would be like at that time, but we still knew that it meant killing and wounding and we thought how terrible it was that probably a lot of people would be killed. At the same time we, with lot of others, thought that it would only be quite a very short affair and everyone who had to go and those who were left behind of course were quite sure that it was going to be over by Christmas. This war had been talked about for some time and yet it wouldn’t be a very long one, it would soon be decisive, and of course at that time there was no thought that we should be any other than the winners in anything that happened.