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Sir, William Newenham Montague Orpen, KBE (1878-1931) was an Irish-born British portrait painter. He studied art at the Metropolitan School and at the Slade School in London where, at the time, great emphasis was put on the study of old masters. He was a fine draughtsman and a popular painter of the well-to-do in the period leading up to World War I. Orpen was made an official war painter of the First World War and in 1917 he travelled to the Western Front. He produced drawings and paintings of privates, dead soldiers and German prisoners of war along with official portraits of generals and politicians. (Excerpt from Goodreads)
An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 Chapter 1 TO FRANCE (APRIL 1917)
The boat was crowded. Khaki, everywhere khaki; lifebelts, rain and storm, everything soaked. Destroyers, churning through the waves, played strange games all round us. Some old-time Tommies, taking everything for granted, smoked and laughed and told funny stories. Others had the look of dumb animals in pain, going to what they knew only too well. The new hands for France asked many questions, pretended to laugh, pretended not to care, but for the most part were in terror of the unknown.
It was strange to watch this huddled heap of humanity, study their faces and realise that perhaps half of them would meet a bloody end before a new moon was over, and wonder how they could do it, why they did it-Patriotism? Yes, and perhaps it was the chance of getting home again when the war was over. Think of the life they would have! The old song:-
"We don't want to lose you,
But we think you ought to go,
For your King and your Country
Both need you so.
"We shall-want you and miss you,
But with all our might and main
We shall cheer you, thank you, kiss you,
When you come back again."
Did they think of that, and all the joys it seemed to promise them? I pray not.
What a change had come over the world for me since the day before! On that evening I had dined with friends who had laughed and talked small scandal about their friends. One, also, was rather upset because he had an appointment at 10.30 the next day-and there was I, a few hours later, being tossed about and soaked in company with men who knew they would run a big chance of never seeing England again, and were certainly going to suffer terrible hardships from cold, filth, discomfort and fatigue. There they stood, sat and lay-a mass of humanity which would be shortly bundled off the boat at Boulogne like so many animals, to wait in the rain, perhaps for hours, before being sent off again to whatever spot the unknown at G.H.Q. had allotted for them, to kill or to be killed; and there was I among them, going quietly to G.H.Q., everything arranged by the War Office, all in comfort. Yet my stomach was twitching about with nerves. What would I have been like had I been one of them?
At Boulogne we lunched at the "Mony" (my companion, Aikman, had been to France before during the war and knew a few things). It was an excellent lunch, and, as we were not to report at G.H.Q. till the next day, we walked about looking at lorries and trains, all going off to the unknown, filled with humanity in khaki weighed down with their packs.
An Onlooker in France 1917-1919
Sir William Orpen
Young Adult
Chapter 1 TO FRANCE (APRIL 1917)
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Chapter 2 The Bapaume Road.
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Chapter 3 Men resting. La Boisselle.
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Chapter 4 A Tank. Pozières.
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Chapter 5 Warwickshires entering Péronne.
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Chapter 6 No Man's Land.
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Chapter 7 Three Weeks in France. Shell shock.
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Chapter 8 Man in the Glare. Two miles from the Hindenburg Line.
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Chapter 9 Air-Marshal Sir H. M. Trenchard, Bart., K.C.B., etc.
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Chapter 10 Howitzer in Action.
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Chapter 11 German 'Planes visiting Cassel.
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Chapter 12 Soldiers and Peasants, Cassel.
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Chapter 13 German Prisoners.
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Chapter 14 View from the Old English Trenches. Looking towards La Boisselle.
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Chapter 15 Adam and Eve at Péronne.
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Chapter 16 A Grave in a Trench.
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Chapter 17 The Deserter.
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Chapter 18 The Great Mine. La Boisselle.
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Chapter 19 The Butte de Warlencourt.
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Chapter 20 Lieut. A. P. F. Rhys Davids, D.S.O., M.C.
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Chapter 21 Lieut. R. T. C. Hoidge, M.C.
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Chapter 22 The Return of a Patrol.
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Chapter 23 Changing Billets.
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Chapter 24 The Receiving-room 42nd Stationary Hospital.
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Chapter 25 A Death among the Wounded in the Snow.
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Chapter 26 Some Members of the Allied Press Camp.
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Chapter 27 Poilu and Tommy.
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Chapter 28 Major-General the Rt. Hon. J. E. B. Seely, C.B., etc.
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Chapter 29 Bombing Night.
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Chapter 30 Major J. B. McCudden, V.C., D.S.O., etc.
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Chapter 31 The Refugee.
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Chapter 32 Lieut.-Colonel A. N. Lee, D.S.O., etc.
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Chapter 33 Marshal Foch, O.M.
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Chapter 34 A German 'Plane Passing St. Denis.
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Chapter 35 British and French A.P.M.'s Amiens.
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Chapter 36 General Lord Rawlinson, Bart., G.C.B., etc.
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Chapter 37 Albert.
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Chapter 38 The Mad Woman of Douai.
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Chapter 39 Field-Marshal Lord Plumer of Messines, G.C.B., etc.
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Chapter 40 Armistice Night. Amiens.
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