Record Number: 30883

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'A motor bicycle drew up at our door and a haggard dispatch rider stumbled in to put a scrap of paper into my hand. It was a page torn out of an army notebook with a scribbled message in pencil from a lieutenant addressed to his commanding officer; the date and time upon it belonged to the afternoon before. The writer was holding on with a handful of men at a point (he gave a rough map reference) but they were nearly surrounded — could help be sent, very soon or it would come too late? The messenger had been trying ever since to find the CO and had failed; the message must be delivered to someone — and now to me of all people! The message, I pointed out, was twelve hours old, but the dispatch rider seemed stupefied with his utter failure and weariness. He went dumbly away with his scrap of paper. And I tried to dismiss from my mind a tiny detail in a disastrous landscape — a huddle of brown down there at the map reference, where, in all likelihood, a young officer and a dozen men would be lying together dead.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Apr 1918

Country:

France

Time

morning

Place:

city: Monts des Cats

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

passive in company unknown
single serial unknown

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Barclay Josiah Baron

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Male

Date of Birth:

1884

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

YMCA volunteer

Religion:

Quaker

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

France

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

unknown unknown

Title:

unknown

Genre:

Ephemera

Form of Text:

Manuscript: Letter, Pencilled note on a page torn out of an army notebook.

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

read in situ

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Source Information:

Record ID:

30883

Source:

Print

Author:

Barclay Baron

Editor:

Michael Snape

Title:

The Back Parts of War: The YMCA Memoirs and Letters of Barclay Baron, 1915-1919

Place of Publication:

Woodbridge, Suffolk

Date of Publication:

2009

Vol:

n/a

Page:

175

Additional Comments:

n/a

Citation:

Barclay Baron, Michael Snape (ed.), The Back Parts of War: The YMCA Memoirs and Letters of Barclay Baron, 1915-1919, (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2009), n/a, p. 175, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=30883, accessed: 27 April 2024

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Additional Comments:

None