Of War and Women Read online

Fig. 1 Map Showing Gloucestershire

  Prologue

  You will quite possibly come round to the premature notion that all was rather decorous and superficial, but I must caution you to persevere. If you are persuaded to simply bide your time quite to the end of the telling, I assure you that it will all converge to profundity. You see, you need only read it. I, on the other hand, had to live it. And I must confess to you, the living of it was extraordinarily unwelcome to me. It was at times so disagreeable that indeed I thought that I should perish in the night from the sheer weight of it applied to every fiber of my being. But somehow, survive I did, and looking back, despite having lived through it my own self, I nevertheless conceive of it even now to have been unendurable. Such are the tricks that memory plays upon us through the course of our lives, especially those of us who suffer through events so traumatic that our own minds are obliged to sedate the facts with fictitious amendment. But here is the most wondrous and joyous part of all as I look back with both trepidation and astonishment, and I trust you shall agree – it was all indeed worth it!

  I was born in London and raised in Gloucestershire, England, the son of the Earl of Winston. Yes, I was born into wealth and privilege, but are the rewards of title sufficient to accord one special advantage in life? Perhaps in the general scheme of things such a supposition is true, but in times of great turmoil, I would submit to you that the burdens of title can be just as abundant as the privileges, perhaps even more so. And so it was that title brought upon me enormous responsibilities.

  I loved my father dearly, but to be truthful, the greatest influence on my upbringing was my mother, Lady Margaret Sutherland. Lady Margaret, as I was required to address her formally up to the age of about fourteen, was to me indeed larger than life itself.

  When I was a small boy she seemed to me to be at least seven feet tall. For instance, although my father stood six feet two, in my childish estimation my mother’s physical stature was well in excess of his. Don’t ask me how I had come to such a notion, but by the time I was twelve and had realized that this was erroneous aggrandizement on my part, the damage had been done – I was by then an inextricable disciple to my mother’s insurmountable will.

  By the age of twenty-five I had begun to lament this realization, thinking that I had perhaps been overly influenced by the weaker of the sexes. But shortly thereafter world changing events would reassure me of just how fortunate I had been to grow to manhood under the tutelage of Lady Margaret.

  One day when I must have been about fourteen years of age my mother and I were passing the time in her beloved sitting room at Wharton Manor when she raised her glistening eyes from a book that she was perusing. The book was I believe All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque. “You must promise me,” she began surreptitiously – I always knew to pay careful attention when she began a soliloquy with those words - and I still remember that on this occasion she actually repeated it, “You must promise me, my child, that you shall cast off the extraneous, and always relentlessly score away the surface matter until the true meaning of the matter at hand is exposed. This, of course, will require great forbearance on your part.”

  I don’t mind telling you that a statement of that sort is not only excessively verbose for a boy of fourteen, it is furthermore burdened with extremely obscure meaning. But when my mother spoke in such deeply mystical and duplicitous terms I was always fearful that I might miss something profound lying hidden beneath the surface. Thus, on that occasion I recall seeking clarification, “Lady Margaret, I’m not sure that I comprehend. Could you perhaps explain in further detail?”

  “My child,” I remember her responding patiently, “I assure you most ardently that beneath the surface of every issue, there is a deeper and more meaningful purpose. Take Wharton Manor, for instance. On the surface, it is a stately mansion worthy of an earl. But scrape away the snooty titles, as well as the hypocrisy of ancestry, and what do you have?”

  “I say, I’m not quite certain,” I replied doubtfully.

  “You have earth, my son! You have normal, ordinary, extremely plentiful earth - dirt - a commodity that is one of the most easily attainable on our planet.”

  “But what about the walls, the roof, the floors, the grounds, Lady Margaret?”

  “Dirt, dirt, dirt, and more dirt. Perhaps fashionably accoutered, but nonetheless dirt, not one whit of which will stand up to the importance of a single moment of human compassion. In the Great War, millions upon millions of lives were turned into worthless dirt because of the simple yet extraordinary failure to observe human compassion, my son.”

  I was beginning to sense the profundity of her meaning, but as I was nevertheless still uncertain as to her exact meaning, I queried one last time, “Could you say it a little more simply, Lady Margaret?”

  “Yes, my child. Always dig patiently beneath the surface layer and focus on the heart of the matter. With forbearance, eventually the proper solution will present itself.”

  Since this final evolution of her lesson seemed to be focused enough for me to one day comprehend, I wrote it down, thinking that one day I might indeed possess sufficient intellect to ascertain its hidden meaning. Inevitably, years later, when I found myself in need of profound guidance, I rummaged around in my old school desk and located that lesson.

  I always suspected that Lady Margaret had said something profound that day, and when much later I located that by now tattered note, I inevitably realized that I had indeed been correct in my suspicion. Lady Margaret’s advice, as it turned out, was the most important lesson of my life. And thus without further ado - here is my story – a story of war and women.