Portrait of British soldier Harry Mulvaney, son of Edith (Hughes) and Peter Mulvaney, who was killed in France aged about 19 years in the 1914-18 war.
Reverse:Harry Mulvaney, son of Edith (née Hughes) and Peter Mulvaney, who was killed in France aged about 19 years in the 1914-18 war. Grandson of Virginia & Wm. Henry Hughes.
"A draft of a hundred and fifty 'proceeded' to France to-night. Most of them half-tight, except those who had been in the guard-room to stop them bolting (again), and the Parson's speech went off, to the usual asides and witticisms. He ended: 'And God go with you. I shall go as far as the station with you.' Then the C.O. stuttered a few inept and ungracious remarks. 'You are going out to the Big Push which will end the war' etc (groans). And away they marched to beat of drums—a pathetic scene of humbug and cant. How much more impressive if they went in silence, with no foolishness of 'God Speed'—like Hardy's 'men who march away . . . To hazards whence no tears can win us.'"
January 17, 1917 entry from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action, then on convalescent leave in Britain. 'The Big Push' was used to describe the 1915 Battle of Loos and 1916's Battle of the Somme, neither of which ended the war, as the Big Pushes of 1917 would not. Thomas Hardy's poem 'The Men Who March Away' was published in The Times of London September 9, 1914, four days after Hardy wrote it with both Hardy and the paper foregoing copyright. The lines (line 5, repeated as line 33) Sassoon quotes, 'To hazards whence no tears can win us' is from the original. Hardy later changed it to, 'Leaving all that here can win us.' The first stanza from Hardy's Complete Poems, page 538:What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray,Leaving all that here can win us;What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away?
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 120, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
1917-01-17, 1917, January, Sassoon, Harry Mulvaney
