I beg you to accept my heartfelt condolences. I would not so much
as hint at the word consolation to you after this unutterably cruel
blow,--even to us, his chance friends of less than a year, it seems too
cruel to be realisable,--were it not that I can give you some account,
at first hand, of the splendid work of your husband on those days,
September 25th and 26th. It must surely be, eventually, a consolation
to you to think that he died no mean, casual death, but that he was
shot down (on the afternoon of Sunday a week ago) when actually on an
errand of help, and after giving himself up for hour after hour to
heavy and perilous toil for the wounded. I have been at some pains to
get for you some details of that fatal afternoon, but I cannot--the
reason will be obvious--now tell you quite all there is. The
essential is that on Sunday morning an appeal came to our station for
stretcher-bearers to assist a battalion, seven of whose bearers were
out of action. Your husband and two other men set out for the trenches
in question, which were to the south-west of Loos. The journey, itself,
had its perils. Over the distance of two miles or thereabouts, the
Germans, who were rallying after their defeat of the day before,
could enfilade our ground. One day I will explain the position with
precision. The three of them eventually reached the series of trenches
at a moment when the Germans were counter-attacking, and were told by
an officer that stretcher-work was impossible at such a moment. It was
suicide to show one's head above the parapet. This was, of course, one
of the old German trenches, and the enemy fire came both from front
and right flank. Chapin consequently told the two others to wait for
him while he reported to the medical officer who had appealed in the
morning, his intention being to return to collect the wounded after
dark, as we did during the week as a matter of routine. The two never
saw him again.
Our line that afternoon wavered for a moment, before the
counter-attack. There was a short period of confusion, and some of our
men were caught in the open by German rifle and machine-gun fire. You
may possibly one day get an exact account from an actual eye-witness,
but from what I can piece together, your husband went over the parapet
to fetch in some wounded man. He was certainly shot in the foot. It
appears that he persisted and was then killed outright by a shot
through the head.
Our work was so exacting at that moment, that hours passed before
Chapin's absence was noticed at our station, and it was not till the
following morning that we felt anxious.
I pass over a series of extravagant adventures that befell me as I made
my way, then, to your husband's destination of the day before, with the
idea of getting first-hand information. I found myself on the scene
when the English were making a further attack. It was impossible, in
daylight, to go into the open, but I found from a medical officer that
a lance-corporal of the R.A.M.C. had, the night before, been seen dead
over the parapet. The English attack, that afternoon, improved the
position. The next morning, we had a run out there; your husband had
been buried in the night near where he fell. I went down on Wednesday
to the trenches, saw the officer who had been in charge of the burial
party, and eventually got the papers, watch, etc., which were found on
his body. These you will have received by now, I suppose. There can be
no harm in telling you that he lies with six other London Territorials,
within a few hundred yards of Loos cemetery.
If I have the pleasure of seeing you again, when this ghastly business
is over, I will tell you something of Chapin's fine work on the
Saturday, collecting wounded on the wire before the first captured
German trench. For many hours I was out there with him;--heart-breaking
conditions, twenty appeals for help where one could only heed one;
rain for hour after hour, and no little annoyance from cross-fire. On
one journey, three of us (your husband was one) came in for a tempest
of fire. Two of us lay low with the laden stretcher on the grass,
while your husband volunteered to go ahead into the village, using
a communication trench to bring back the "wheels," by which we get
stretchers along at a good pace over roads. Eventually the tempest
ended, and the whole day ended without casualties for us. We went to
bed at midnight for two hours. Before daybreak I joined a party that
was going to Loos, and so began the fatal Sunday.
If, dear Mrs. Chapin, you succeed in getting more detailed information
of your husband's death it will be from some one or another in the 17th
Battalion London Regiment.
I feel that I am intruding on your grief. Excuse me, and believe me,
with profound sympathy,
Yours very sincerely,
RICHARD CAPELL.