One Hull Of A Fragmented Story: The WWI Book From The Trenches
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About 17 years I picked up a box of books from a charity shop on Newland Avenue. Among the books was a small brown autograph book, buried at the bottom of the box. In the book I found page after page of pencilled verses, poetry, funny rhymes and various sketches and drawings. Most of the entries had dates on them, and I realised that the dates not only began during the First World War in 1915, but stretched through to 1929. The earliest entry talks of it being "nearly six months since we left to roam. An alien country for God, King and Home." It names the 1st/4th Easy Yorkshire regiment in France, the "famous Terrier's Army."
The owner of the book, must have been one of the lucky ones, as the book made it out of the trenches and touches on moments in local history, like the building of the R33 air-ship in 1919. A sketch showing the air-ship coming out of the hanger where it was built in Barlow, near Selby. Eventually in 1929 the entries stopped. With an entry about the value of friendship. The very first entry, on the inside cover, is from someone called "Nellie", and simply reads, "The best love from, Nellie." I think it can be assumed that the autograph book was a gift to a departing soldier, from a loved one, that made it's way back home. |
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Many of the entries are poems, rhymes or verses, jotted in pencil, with initials and fragments of names scrawled against them. The dated entries span from the 29th of September 1915, through to the 29th of July 1929, a period of 13 years and 3 months. The pages touch on the horrors of war in a brief matter of fact manner. There are only a few references of regiments and fallen comrades, to tell us who this belonged to. But they are still there, poignant in their almost insignificance among all the other verses and sketches. A piece of outsider art. And as such an honest mediation between the viewer and the creator. In insight not into just one person, but of those around him at various points in history. At a moment in their lives, they left their mark. Their history, their influences and the culture they lived in, brushed momentarily across the page. What to make of it? I'm not sure, I'm not sure if I even want to know where it came from, or to leave it as a mystery.
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