Ben Lane: Duty and destiny in a desert land
Part 2
Ben Lane: Kempley Son, husband and father
Ben was not like the young men who rushed to join up at the beginning of the conflict. He was a mature, family man who would have harboured no illusions about the realities of warfare. There is no doubt that he did not want to go to fight and, indeed, it seems he signed up only when it became unavoidable.
Conscription of married men was introduced in May 1916, by which time he was already in training with the South Wales Borderers – so he must have enlisted shortly before it was introduced. Indeed in one of his letters home he mentions he has read in the paper that conscription has been brought in.
By this stage of the war, the initial euphoria displayed by many towards it had been displaced by the grim realisation that thousands of those who went off to battle were never coming back.
Penoyre, like many mansions, had been partially turned into a military hospital and Ben and Rosina would have been only too familiar with the horrendous injuries suffered by casualties treated there.
Three months before Ben left for training camp his son Allen was born. He was too young to remember his father’s departure but Mary, now three, would always recall the day she accompanied him for tea with his employer before he left for the army. Only the two of them were honoured with the invitation – her mother and baby brother had to stay at home. Of course, she did not know the significance of this treat at the time but she never forgot how Ben carried her proudly on his shoulders to the door of the ‘big house’. It was an image of closeness to her father that she held onto for the rest of her life.
Throughout his training period at Sniggery Camp, near Liverpool, it is clear both Ben and Rosina were hoping and praying the war would be over before he could get to the front.
In his letters he tries to reassure her all will be well, proffering several possible impediments to him being sent into action:
- He is not good at musketry and it will take a while to train him
- He has to pass the medical
- Things are looking up over there
- Surely, it must be over soon
- It would be finished before he could get there
Reading between the lines, you get the distinct impression he is trying to convince himself as much as her.
In one of his first letters after starting training he wrote: “We shall get a week [off] after we have finished training but that will take some time as we are awkward at it. But don’t be downhearted about us as a good many things may happen before then and pray God the war will finish before we are ready.”
As the months passed, it must have become clear to him that his prayers were not to be answered as one by one the obstacles to him being deployed melted away. Yet he tried to remain positive – when he finally left for Mesopotamia, his attitude was that at least he would not be in France.
“They say there will be about five hundred of us going out with this draft but I seem to think we shall be safer there than in France,” he wrote.
Repeatedly he says that they must pray that he is spared “for our dear little ones sakes”.
“I do hope and pray to God Dearest that the war will soon be over and peace restored once more and that I shall be spared to come back to you all once more as my heart ackes [sic] for you and especially our dear little children, but I believe God will take care of me for their sakes as I am always longing for you all.”
Time and again he says he has faith that God will look after him – but all the same he bought Rosina a sewing machine so she could support herself and the children with a trade after he was gone. He recognised that as the male head of the household the family’s entire tenure could be at risk if he did not return from the conflict.
In a letter dated the 15th of January 1917, he mentions how his unit had lost its second officer in command that morning to a sniper’s bullet; it could almost have been a premonition of how his own life would end almost exactly a month later when, having been woken by his platoon sergeant to take his tour of duty, he was shot in the head. His death was instantaneous.
Initially, Rosina was told only that Ben had been killed in action on February 14th. It took her many months to find out how he died (and more than two years to discover where he was buried). In all that time she was haunted by the fear that he had gone to his grave never having received her letters.
She never really knew for sure.
Part One of Ben and Rosina’s Story “Ben Lane: Kempley Son, husband and father”
