Author Archives: Richard Berryman

Dear Mother    Just got 2 letters from you. My second address had nothing to do with the XX (which is right, & X seems to have worked alright on one of your letters). The second time I left out the Div, which one is supposed not to put in.

Have you mixed Topher’s & my feast up. ‘Cos we are’nt together yet! I’ve no idea if he will be transferred over or not. I shall probably be alone for Christmas, & if he’s near I’ll try & get him allowed over & he can mess with me.

I am so glad the men like the dining room. I’ve written to Jane to buy me a saddle, that bit I wrote about is’nt there after all I think. But there may be another, very rusty when I saw it last, it’s a curb & snaffle combined, please get that out somehow if it’s there, but you say nothing about my things or keys. Have they come yet. I’ve written to Marseilles about them to see if they ever started.

I’ve just remembered! What flowers grow between now & March or April? I’d like to plant some around my hospital & make the place look nice. Don’t sunflowers grow nowadays. I’d like the place to look nice later on. Also I wondered if any of these working parties of lovely ladies would like to make a red cross flag for me. Any size, bigger the better. You might send along seeds or bulbs or whatever it is grows during the next few months. No desperate hurry. You know the woollie has’nt arrived yet.

I do hope Lloyd George will put things a bit.

The rather nice parcel has’nt come yet. I expect parcels this time of year take ages.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard

In one of the boxes you’ll find a tunic with dark leather buttons on, & two little brass buttons on the black tabs. Please take them out & send them to Lesley & Roberts, 16 George Street Hanover Sq.

A letter from Pitney that went to India just came.

Curb, Snaffle & Spur – 1894 book on training cavalry horses

https://archive.org/details/curbsnafflespurm00ande

http://www.lesleyandroberts.com/

14.12.16

Dear Mother. Many thanks for your letter with the pencils, somehow or other I could have told anywhere they had been sharpened by you, I shall be so sorry when I have to resharpen them. You will get a letter from me saying I had found out that the keys had never started, mind you put plenty of address about a parcel & name & address inside in case of accidents as I saw that the address on the sock chicken & woollie one had nearly got rubbed out.

Paul sent me two papers today. I heard from Karachi that June is very well & well looked after by a nice girl I knew there. Don’t forget about that lace, I know if the girls see it they’ll want it, and it’s for Cicely!

There are two rather valuable platinum & pearl rings about somewhere, I would like you to give them to the two girls who you think have behaved best during the past year!

Best love to all,

Yr loving son     Richard.

If no decision can be come to about the rings, tell Dreda, No-teeth to have one, & Dreda herself the other, for the trouble of giving it to No-teeth.

If you could get a real dough-cake sometime, have it put in a good box & sent out. Pay all postage on anything out of that £5. It’s a shame to make you pay.

Gertrude would have sharpened the pencils by hand, shaving slices of wood and graphite off with a razor-sharp pen-knife rather than by turning the ends in a pencil sharpener, which is how Richard would have recognised that she was the person who sharpened them.

12^th.

Dear Mother   Many thanks for the parcel with woollie chicken socks & sweets. I’ve taken off my present woollie & put on yours, much nicer, it does not take up much room. I’m awful glad of the sox, those other 2 pairs you sent me are most useful. Always worn with the field boots & spurs.

I hear from Cox my keys were never sent! However they should be on their way now & I hope you’ll be able to open the boxes & get boots, buttons etc. Should you not get ’em almost as soon as this, write to Cox & ask them if they have received them. Lesley Roberts may want those buttons soon. One of those keys does for 2 boxes, that little tiny tin suitcase & one of the others. The brass one opens the red & black tin box, the big new one, the big new box. I hope everything arrived as per the list I sent you.

Will you have that fishing reel cleaned & oiled a bit; also the box-spurs. Has my evening dress etc returned, no good coming home if it has’nt. I do hope everything will be all right in the boxes & not gone bad or anything.

I am going over today to see if I can hear any news of Topher’s arrival.

Snow yesterday. Sawful.

Best love to all yr loving son

Richard

There’s some lace in one of those boxes. Keep care of it & don’t let anyone bag it. It’s for a girl I know.

Most important I keep forgetting to ask. Please send me a 2/- tin of Iron Jelloids No 2a. I cannot get ’em in France. Also a packet of “Thermogen” wool.

http://www.oldshopstuff.com/Shop/tabid/1248/ItemID/10251/Listing/Old-Tin-for-Iron-Jelloids-No2/Default.aspx

http://www.historyworld.co.uk/advert.php?id=346

1921 cartoon in Daily Mirror mentioning Thermogen wool

http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/WH5746/zoom

XX Deccan Horse
B.E.F.
France

2.12.16

My dear Mother. I wish you would’nt please give me such shocks. “Read this first” you said & it promptly began all about your will, I imagined the second letter was all going to be about some awful illness you had got! What fools Cox in Marseilles are. The keys were delivered to them I believe, anyhow I’ve written to all concerned & I hope they will turn up. And when they do I think I’ll have those field boots sent out. Would you mind packing them up securely & sending them. I may as well use them.

It was good about the 2 Zeps coming down. Where did Topher say he was, I have’nt heard from him lately, but he must be resting again now. They don’t seem to be able to decide about Jim. I expect he’ll like Hong Kong only the first 10 days of the voyage are rotten, they are quite safe when once past Port Said.

The “Gold Watch” is some use after all, but fancy having all those Tommies traipsing in & out, & how it will stink of smoke.

Ted sounds very swagger in his new Tent, I wrote to him yesterday.

So sorry you’ve had such a cold, I do hope it’s better by now.

You’d better send me a Xmas pudding as everybody seems to get odd things & I must put up a show, but you need’nt bother about sending anything else.

Freezing like blazes & so dull & cheerless.

The Countess’ daughter seems awfully bucked with the music. Trés charmante & elegante or something. I saw her for a sec yesterday.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard

Of course I quite agree with you that the girls should first & foremost be provided for.

Then about Holmwood. I think that would be simplest to put Holmwood together with everything else, & divide up as you suggest. I don’t fancy I should ever live at Holmwood, much as I should like to, & taking everything into consideration it would be best to put Holmwood in with the other things, & me in with the other boys.

My idea has always been that provided all the girls don’t marry, the unmarried ones will live together somewhere, or at anyrate have a small house, with as much of the nice furniture that you’ve got in it. Then we unmarried boys will always look on that place more or less as a home, i.e. if we are working abroad. I’d hate that furniture to be lost.

Of course I quite agree with you that the girls should first & foremost be provided for.

Then about Holmwood. I think that it would be simplest, to put Holmwood together with everything else & divide up as you suggest. I don’t fancy I should ever live at Holmwood, much as I should like to. I am afraid all the girls won’t get married, & surely one or two of them will make a home somewhere together, & we unmarried boys will more or less look on that as a home, i.e. if we are all abroad. Anyhow Holmwood would be too big for them

The section starting “Then about Holmwood” is duplicated in the transcript from the IWM, Their transcriptions are excellent which suggests that Richard had drafted this section of his letter and lost his place when copying it. I can check the original next time I go to the IWM. 

X Deccan Horse.
B.E.F.
France.

1.12.16

Dear Mother       Just a line to say address as above and not as I put last time. Tell Ben & Dreda I wrote them the same.

Euh is’nt it cold,

Yr loving son

Richard.

Actually 20^th (XX) Deccan Horse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Deccan_Horse

Nov 18

Dear Mother  I got the disc & gloves alright. Open my luggage when it comes & have my field boots looked after. Get Capon to put an ordinary shoe tree in the foot & stuff the legs with paper. There are some films in that camera that want developing. Dunno’ what they’ll be like.

The breeches have come but the others are’nt mine & in case you send that British warm, that’s not mine either! I got the               & bystander.

Believe I’m off again.

Best of love to all

Yr loving son

Richard.

I keep having to remind myself that as a medic, Richard would have seen and heard far worse horrors and far more of them than Paul and Ted put together. But really, would it have hurt to write a “thank you” for the things his mother had sent him and a “please” for the things he was asking her to do?  And we’ve just seen him write a charming letter to his sister. Perhaps that’s it. He’s used up all his charm on his sisters and their prettiest friends. 

Monday. 13^th.

My dear Dreda. I believe I owe you a letter don’t I? Many thanks for yours, write sometimes & give me any news. My dear I’ve just come back from the front & am now safe again! Who do you think I saw the other day. Topher! He was awfully pleased to see me I believe & of course we had a huge brick & he told me all about his leave & so on. What a nice little moustache he’s got, you really ought to tell him to go steady with it. He admired mine awfully & now he’s going to try and train his like mine! Poor boy has gone up again today I believe but I may be going up again in a day or two, so we must have another F.F.

Of course you can never imagine the state of the country up there, you’d never believe it. It’s no good trying to describe it, I can’t understand how anyone ever lived up there. There really is’nt room to walk between the shell holes & of course the mud is the limit. It’s so dangerous too. The shells keep dropping about around you as you ride up, & one might easily drop on one & give one a nasty blow. Oh lor too, the air fights & bombs dropping at night, I am sure it must be worse than that Zep raid you had at Guildford. I hate the moonlight nights as the Bosch always comes then, sterrible. And the guns going off all round you all day & all night,  & the big ones each time rattle the whole place, & the other night just as I was passing water into an old shell case before getting into bed, bang! goes a huge gun, out goes the candle & there was I in the dark, wondering what was going to happen next!

T’is funny being back here again & everything is calm & quiet. A comfortable bed with sheets & clean plates & cups to eat & drink with. On the whole I like the other best, one’s doing more, but enough’s as good as a feast & for the men it would be better to do 3 days in the trenches than a month’s making roads & railways up to just behind them.

I had tea with a Countess yesterday. Bow wow, and one daughter most fascinating, fair hair done in a huge chignon, & dark brown eyes, ripping figure & plays the piano so nicely. Please send me “The only girl in” etc to give her to play. Her aunt is the richest woman in Paris, so I’m all for it. The girl is about 18.

I must write to Topher.

Write to me again soon if you have time.

Best love

from

Dick

Here we see that Richard could be charming. His letters to his mother (who adored him) were little more than shopping lists, but this letter to his sister is as full of comment and incident as any of Ted’s. Now why couldn’t he write to his mother like this?

Possible countess

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Henriette_of_Belgium

If You Were The Only Girl In The World

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAPeGQ3lEkg

Sunday 12^th

Dear Mother

Many thanks for your letters & the parcels, but no breeches yet! or Socks. The loofas, caramels, paper & canteen are here & many thanks for all. I expect you’ll hear Topher & I have met. It was nice being able to see him & I think he was pleased too. He looked awfully fit, but most anxious to get out of his job & I am doing my best for him.

I am out of the danger zone at present, but may be off again. It’s very nice down here, quiet & nothing much doing. I went to tea yesterday with a countess & was very much struck by one of her daughters. The money has come, many thanks for it.

What a pity I did’nt know about Wiggs before. Ben has written & I could easily have gone & seen where he is buried poor boy. However if I go up again I will go & see at once.

The lanyard is very smart. And very many thanks.

Must post this.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard

Wiggs, whose full name was Ivan Provis Wentworth Bennett, was killed on the Somme on the 13th or 14th July 1916.

He is buried at Thiepval, his body having been moved there in 1931. His remains weren’t identified until they were moved from another location also on the Somme and the original CWGC entry records an Unknown British Officer. His body was identied from his officers tunic with its regimental buttons and badges, from an engraved pencil case, and from his dental records.

This is just one tiny example of the astonishingly detailed work done by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission around the world matching archived documents with what are effectively archaeological finds.

However, in late 1916 it seems unlikely that Dick could have found Wiggs’ grave. 

Nov 4.

Dear Mother

Many thanks for D.Ms, most acceptable. I want one of those silver identity discs, round one, not oblong if poss.

Inscription

R.C.P. Berryman
Capt I M S
C of S.

You know the disc on a chain you wear round your wrist. I enclose a small cheque to carry on with.

I got Sheina’s letter, please thank her.

I got your letter dated 27 with those photographs of Jim & Sheina, awfully interesting. I hardly recognise Ruth. Many thanks for sox & breeches, they will roll up soon I expect. It’s not my B. warm at home I’ve got it here!

Fancy Jim coming out with the Portuguese army.

If you can get me a pair of gauntlet gloves (soft gauntlet part) size 8 I’d like them. Warm & waterproof.

Best love to all.

Yr loving son

Richard

I saw Morton’s photograph in one of the D.Ms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scotland

Similar ID tag

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/380287/identification-discs-sapper-alfred-galbraith-world-war-i-1915-1916

Gauntlet gloves (1941)

http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30099897

1^st.

Dear Mother   Would you mind sending me some loofa sock things for boots.

Say   2 pairs size 10. for gum boots

2 pairs size 7

2 pairs size 8

& you might send me some of those funny things you just shove on your toes under your sock like I used to see you sending Topher.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard.

By the way I’m a Capt

How good for Ted getting that medal.

PTO

Please send me that Balaclava hat that is knocking about somewhere

I forgot to put this in!

R.C.P.B.

You might send me one of the linings for my tin hat 6¾.

Can’t see now, but it’s got sort of rubber buffer arrangements

comme ça