Letters from the Front 1914: Capt Palmer's account of The Retreat from Mons 1914

William Llewellen Palmer ("Pedlar") 1883 - 1953 belonged to the generation that had it hardest of all the generations. Their generation was determined by events like no other lives in no other time in Britain before or since. They were called to defend their country as young men. They saw their friends and relatives suffer or die in the trenches, and as retirement loomed they watched in horror as their own children went through much the same experience in yet another world war. All the pale horses of the apocalypse stormed through their lives. They witnessed revolution, war, famine, plague and national bankruptcy. Some generations never see any of that. Their's saw it all. Up to the time of his first leave from the front during Christmas 1914, he writes with lucidity and terror: "...Covered in German blood" is just one of many verses he wrote home with, none of which he repeated after his numbing return from the front to the drawing rooms of London. These initial letters record with freshness a young man's first impression of war, of the great retreat and the final stand at Ypres, which, he realised at the time, was probably the most important battle in all of European history and Germany's main chance to win the war.