"Flandern 1918 Prosit Neujahr!" — Happy New Year! from Flanders, 1918, a church steeple is in the distance, woods, and a green field. In the foreground ruins of a building and a bare tree. German watercolor.
Flandern 1918 Prosit Neujahr!Happy New Year! Flanders, 1918.
"It had been, as Edward wrote on New Year's Eve, such 'a rotten year in many ways—Geoffrey and Tah dead and we've seen each other about a week all told. . . . F. is in hospital at present so the C.O. and I are the only officers who joined the Bn in 1914.' The War had gone on for such centuries; its end seemed as distant as ever, and the chances of still being young enough, when it did finish, to start life all over again, grew more and more improbable. By 1918 I had already begun to have uncomfortable, contending dreams of the future. Sometimes I had returned, conscience-stricken and restless to civilian lie while the War was still on, and, as in its first year, was vainly struggling to give my mind to learning. In other dreams I was still a V.A.D., at thirty, at forty, at fifty, running round the wards at the beck and call of others, and each year growing slower, more footsore, more weary."
Vera Brittain served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment. Tah was Victor Richardson, who was severely wounded on April 9, 1917, in the Battle of Arras. He died on June 9. Geoffrey Thurlow was killed in action at Monchy-le-Preux, southeast of Arras, on 23rd April 1917.
Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900–1925 by Vera Brittain, pp. 399–400, copyright © Vera Brittain, 1933, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1978, originally 1933
1918-01-01, 1918, January, nurse, New Year's 1918, Flandern 1918 Prosit Neujahr
