Jack's Life
Douglas Gresham, author of Jack's Life and stepson
to C.S. Lewis
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BOOK EXCERPT
Daring, Duty, and Despair
By Douglas Gresham
Broadman & Holman Publishers
CBN.com
Excerpt from Jack's Life, Broadman & Holman Publishers
In the holidays before Jack’s last term at Malvern College, Jack
had come to know a near neighbor of his in Belfast, a boy about three
years older than himself, named Arthur Greeves. They became friends
because of Jack’s good nature and good manners. Arthur was sick
and in bed, and his mother thought that a visit from someone might cheer
him up. Arthur was thought to have a weak heart (though it turned out
later that he didn’t at all), and his mother used to spoil him
and put him to bed as soon as he felt even the least bit tired or out
of sorts. Jack, being the good-natured and well brought up boy that
he was, went along to Arthur’s house to visit the lad who was
probably not in the least ill but merely bored silly; and much to his
surprise, he found that he was reading a book of Jack’s beloved
Norse myths. At once they were launched into a deep and lively conversation,
and the acorn was planted of a relationship that was to grow into a
giant oak tree of a friendship, a friendship that was to last for the
rest of Jack’s life.
It is interesting to look back on because the two boys were different
in so many ways. Jack hated the thought of being ill and loathed having
to stay in bed. Arthur on the other hand enjoyed being sick and would
take to his bed at the slightest provocation or just not get up at all
if he didn’t feel like it. I suppose that being the youngest of
five children, it might have been his way of ensuring that he got his
share (and more) of attention from his busy mother. Jack loved to work,
while the mention of the word would almost reduce Arthur to helpless
weakness.
The two boys became fast friends. So close were they that when they
were a bit older, they discussed the secret things of boyhood, girls
and what they felt about them. Arthur was not averse to falling in love
with almost every girl he met and would tell Jack all about it. Jack
was a little less excitable, but he too had his share of longings, and
he told Arthur all about his relationships—some real and some
imaginary. With Arthur, Jack shared many of the secrets of his heart.
Arthur had a fine taste in literature and was already widely read. After
all, he spent a great deal of time in bed before radios were invented
to say nothing of television; he never went to any formal school and
more or less educated himself at home from books until he was twenty-five
years old when he went to an art school.
Arthur began to recommend books for Jack to read, and he had such a
wide experience of books that he was able to give Jack some good advice
in this matter. Jack read everything Arthur wrote to him about, and
Jack in turn advised Arthur on what to read next. In this way they both
encouraged each other to forge ahead in reading. Soon though, Jack was
reading all the great classics of Europe in their original languages,
and he left Arthur far behind in this regard.
While he was Great Bookham, Jack did not spend all his time reading
and studying. He also went for long walks through the wild countryside
of the county and again came face-to-face with the various animals that
haunted the woods and fields. In England in those days, hedges were
used more than fences to separate fields, and then, as today, each hedge
was like a city for wild birds and animals. All kinds of English songbirds
nested in them, and among their roots foxes had their earths (which
is what a fox’s home is called), badgers their setts, rabbits
their burrows, and throughout them weasels and stoats hunted and fed.
Surrey was also home to huge old trees, oaks, ash trees, horse chestnuts
(or “conker” trees) as well as sweet chestnuts and elms.
Squirrels leapt and played in the branches, and the world was alive
with sound and movement. Surrey was a beautiful place back then, but
over the years since, the towns have slowly spread out and grown larger
and larger, many of them just joining up, swallowing little villages
as they did so. Now it is mostly covered with houses, towns, and motorways.
Jack revelled in his walks, and in his reading as well. Some of the
authors he read were pretty advanced for someone not yet eighteen, but
he also read books by people like John Buchan, H. H. Rider Haggard,
Mark Twain, Jules Verne, and other more popular writers; he had long
loved the works of E. Nesbit.
---
While Jack was learning and growing, the war was also growing, though
nobody seemed to be learning much from it. The news from the front always
seemed to be bad no matter which side you were on, and it always was
bad with more and more young men killing and being killed. It was impossible
for Jack to be unaware of all this, and yet at the time it seemed distant,
as if it were some strange dream of which he was not a part, at least,
not yet. Though even in Surrey, on a still night if the wind was just
right, he could hear the mutter and grumble of the far distant guns
in France. About this time and with the encouragement of Kirkpatrick,
Jack began to take his own writing more seriously. He began to have
dreams of one day becoming a great poet and worked hard to try to learn
as much about poetry and all forms of writing as he could. One author
whom he encountered, by what seemed to be complete chance, was to change
his whole life. One day at Great Bookham railway station, which like
many stations then had a bookshop where travelers could buy something
to read on their journeys, he found a book called Phantastes by a George
MacDonald. MacDonald had been a minister in Scotland. He had died in
1905, but he left behind a large number of extraordinary books, and
Phantastes is one of the most extraordinary. It is a fantasy that mixes
all sorts of characters and events and keeps the reader alert and wondering
all the way through. Jack read it and said later that he was never the
same again. In the years to come, he was to read everything that MacDonald
had written, and most of it delighted him.
---
Warnie had gone off to Sandhurst to become a career soldier. Now it
was Jack’s turn to decide what he was to do with his life. Obviously
he wanted to go to university (he preferred Oxford) and study literature
with the hope of becoming a university teacher and a great poet at the
best, and a schoolteacher or a linguist at worst. However, World War
I was by now in full swing, and Jack would be liable to be called up
to join the army if he stayed in England. Kirkpatrick had no doubts
at all about Jack’s ability to gain success at Oxford, but if
he returned to Ireland, he would not have to fight in the war. Jack
had to make up his own mind which way to go. In the end Jack decided
that he would stay in England and would therefore join the British army.
Warnie was by this time already serving as an officer in the Royal Army
Service Corps, and it may be that Jack decided to follow his brother’s
example yet again. It is also likely that Jack regarded it as his duty
to fight against what he saw as an evil that needed to be defeated.
Jack had read so much about the history of the world’s great events
that he had a well-developed sense of duty. By this time he was amazingly
well read, and his knowledge of literature was far in advance of most
young men his age. To enter a college at Oxford University, Jack had
to sit for two separate exams.
The first was a scholarship exam in order to win some assistance to
enable him to be at a college at all because his father really couldn’t
afford to support him fully. In December 1916 Jack sat for a scholarship
exam in classics, which is the study of ancient history and languages
like Latin and Greek. Jack was dismayed by the exam as it was a particularly
difficult one, and he was convinced that he had failed. Although his
first choice, New College, passed him over, University College awarded
him its second of three open scholarships.
The second was an exam to gain entrance to Oxford University called
Responsions. Responsions was just a simple exam to ensure that the student
was capable of the sort of study that every undergraduate must perform,
and most students of a scholarship level would not have had to study
for it. For Jack though, this was not the case at all because he knew
almost nothing about science and was not interested in it, and his ability
in maths was almost a negative quantity. So after he did the scholarship
exam, it was back to Kirkpatrick to study for Responsions. He also studied
Italian at this time, when really, he should have concentrated more
on science and math. His idea was that if he failed to achieve a career
at Oxford, he might enter the government service in the Foreign Office,
and speaking several languages would be an advantage. At this point
in Jack’s life, it seems that God took a visible hand in his progress.
Jack sat for Responsions, and he failed the exam. He failed it because
he could not pass the math part of it. He was allowed to sit for it
again, but he failed it for the second time. Despite this double failure,
for some unknown reason the people in charge still invited him to join
University College Oxford, though if he wanted to remain there, he would
have to pass the Responsions exam at some stage; and so his career as
a scholar began almost unofficially. It is hard to imagine anything
good coming from something as horrible as a war, but as we shall see,
God had his own plans for C. S. Lewis.
---
And so to Oxford, the City of Dreaming Spires, a wonderful place for
a romantic who wanted above all things to immerse himself in classical
studies. Oxford in 1917 was a quiet and almost painfully lovely place.
There was almost no traffic in the city streets, and the quiet so beloved
by those who are dedicated to study seemed to flow in and around the
buildings and the halls of its ancient colleges and fill the soul with
peace. Horses and carriages were still the most common means of transport,
as cars were still for the rich and thus were few and far between though
lorries and delivery vans had begun to appear here and there. Students
scurried to and fro wearing their academic gowns, and almost the whole
city was given over to study and learning. April, the month in which
Jack went up to Oxford, is a lovely month in England, as it is the month
that begins to hint at the first promise of spring.
As spring dances on, the trees which abound in Oxford burst into bud,
blossoms are soon to be seen everywhere, and spring flowers splash the
walks, parks, and gardens with color. Daffodils, tulips, narcissus begin
to give back the brightness of the watery early sun and early dandelions,
daisies, and buttercups just start to show their delight at the warming
of the year, preparing for the riot of color they are soon to enjoy.
Greeted with the sights sounds and smells of Oxford in the springtime
promise of a new summer, Jack fell completely in love with the place.
If you go to Oxford today, you will find it choked with cars and buses
and trucks. Often (as my son James once remarked) the air is too thick
to breathe and too thin to plough. Heavy industry invaded the area of
Cowley with car factories and such, and the huge numbers of people who
came to work there so swelled the population that the place has never
recovered. There is a constant roar of engines and wheels all day long,
and it is nothing like the gracious, quiet, and lovely place that it
once was. But even so, when you have finally managed to put out of your
mind the modern-day desecration of the city, it is still a beautiful
place. To Jack in 1917 it was heavenly.
---
Jack was to enter University College, usually called “Univ,”
on April 26 for the beginning of the summer term and would start a career
that would see him in Oxford for the next thirty-nine years barring
a short time when he was a soldier in the army.
Jack now entered a new world. His rooms at Univ. were reasonably large
and comfortable. He had a servant, employed by the college and known
as a “scout” to look after his housekeeping; and his meals
were provided. Dinner was served in a small hall or lecture room as
there were not many students at the college. Most of those who should
have been there were off fighting in the war. Other meals were brought
to him by the scout. Univ. was at that time more like a military base
than a college, as a large part of it was being used as a hospital for
wounded soldiers. Jack did not start formal studies, though, because
he was soon to be enlisted in the Officer’s Training Corps at
the college and would have no time for classical study. The seriousness
of the situation that England was in at this time of World War I can
be seen in the fact that there were just twelve undergraduates at Univ.
and of those only three, including Jack, were freshmen. Almost an entire
generation of young men was killed in that terrible conflict.
Jack found the O.T.C. training to be physically demanding and not at
all what he was used to or liked, but despite that he enjoyed himself
immensely. Jack loved the rivers of Oxford and the trees and fields
that still surrounded the town in those days. He revelled in swimming
and walking whenever his training duties allowed him time off. He was
also just beginning to discover the wonderful libraries that Oxford
provides. Like most students with the whole world of wisdom still to
discover, Jack loved to sit for late hours of the night and talk about
all sorts of things, and he joined a variety of clubs and societies.
Soon though, he was moved from the comfort of Univ. to a more military
environment temporarily established at another college called Keble.
Here he met the man who was to be his roommate, a likable young man
called Edward (Paddy) Francis Courtenay Moore, who, like Jack, was from
Ireland. The two young men were soon fast friends.
He and Paddy had a tiny room more like a cell than anything else and
furnished with two iron beds and little else. They had no sheets and
no pillows but slept in their pajamas under woolen blankets. This was
the first time in his life since Wynyard School that Jack had to rough
it, but with his Wynyard experiences behind him, this was not really
much hardship for him.
Paddy’s mother had come to Oxford to be near her son and to see
him as much as possible before he was sent to France to the trenches.
She knew all too well that the chances of him ever coming back were
slim indeed. Thus there entered into Jack’s life a person with
whom he was to be associated for more than thirty years. As we have
seen, Jack had long ago lost his mother and had ever since been bounced
around from place to place, some horrible, some better, but none except
Great Bookham ever homelike. He was only eighteen years old, his father
was immovable from his Belfast security, and Jack must have been feeling
desperately alone and homesick. In any case he was pleased to be invited
by Paddy to join in with his family on occasional outings. Paddy’s
mother, Mrs. Janie Moore, was about the same age Jack’s mother
would have been had she lived and was separated from her husband. Paddy
also had a sister Maureen who was about eleven at that time. Jack delighted
in the easy and cheerful family atmosphere that he encountered in the
company of these three expatriate Irish folk.
---
Frequently Jack and Paddy were sent out on exercises and traveled here
and there, sometimes billeted in homes and sometimes sleeping out beneath
the stars. This was supposed to toughen them up for life in the trenches,
but it was complete silliness, for nothing could prepare anyone for
the horror and filth of trench warfare. Soon enough Jack was commissioned
as an officer, a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry, and
was given a month’s leave before being called to active service.
During this leave Jack and Paddy made a pact between them that should
one or the other of them die in battle, the survivor (if there was one)
would care for the dependants and family of the one who had died. If
Jack had died, Paddy would have been committed to looking after Jack’s
dependent family members who at that time were nonexistent though it
might have meant taking care of Albert or Warnie should the need arise.
If Paddy were to fall, Jack would be duty bound to take care of both
Janie and Maureen. This was an agreement that Jack was to take seriously,
in keeping with both his romantic nature and his sense of honor.
To this day no one really knows what was going on in Jack’s head
concerning the relationship he had developed with Janie Moore. Some
people like to believe that he had a love affair with her; others, that
he simply allowed her to take the place of a mother in his affections.
He must have longed so much for a mother at that time, for he was all
too well aware that he was poised, about to plunge into the midst of
darkness, death, and destruction, unlikely ever to return. The truth
is that nobody knows and probably nobody ever will. Certainly, he loved
her as well as the family atmosphere that he had grown accustomed to
with Paddy’s family and that he had missed so cruelly ever since
he was ten years old.
Also, when his leave began, he was ill with flu or something of that
nature. So instead of going straight home to Ireland and his father’s
house, he spent the first two weeks of his leave with the Moore family
at their home in Bristol, where Mrs. Moore nursed him back to health,
and only then went on to Ireland and Little Lea. In his place most young
men might well make the same decision, but it was the cause of deep
distress to Albert Lewis who could not understand why Jack would want
to be anywhere rather than at home with him. Albert had tried desperately
hard to fill the gap left in his sons’ lives by the death of their
mother and had—as almost all fathers must in these circumstances—failed
miserably. His attempts to be a friend and companion to his sons had
actually driven them away from him. Albert was unaware of what his efforts
had cost him and was hurt by what he probably saw as Jack’s betrayal.
The two were never close but any hope of achieving closeness with his
sons died in Albert when he realized that Jack had wanted to spend time
with Paddy’s family instead of with him. It was foolish really,
for all fathers have to learn that their children move on, leave them
behind, and cease to be merely a part of their parents. Jack at eighteen
was perhaps a little early in this, but that itself was mostly Albert’s
own doing by projecting him out into the world by himself when he was
but nine years old. Now, ten years later, reaping what he himself had
sowed, Albert was puzzled and upset. Jack naturally enough was not prepared
to discuss the matter.
---
When he came back from his month’s leave, Jack was sent to a
camp near the coastal town of Plymouth where he was to take charge of
a party of men who were under training. He had virtually nothing to
do all day. Once he had handed his men over to an instructor, he had
no further duties until he took command of them again when they had
finished their day’s training and then simply led them back to
the barracks.
A little over a month later, he received orders to report to Southampton
to catch a ship to France and the fighting. In those days as today,
soldiers about to be sent into battle were given a few days or in this
case a mere forty-eight hours of leave in which to say their good-byes
and tidy up any loose ends of their lives. Jack went to Bristol and
Mrs. Moore’s house, having first invited his father to come and
visit him there and see him before he left for France. His telegram
to Albert read in part “Report Southampton Saturday. Can you come
Bristol? If so meet at station. Reply Mrs. Moore’s house.”
Albert, who must have been dreading just such a telegram, would not,
could not, or simply was unwilling to allow himself to understand that
Jack was telling him to come at once to Bristol for what was likely
the last chance to see his son alive. He sent back a message that said
he didn’t understand Jack’s telegram. I for one do not believe
that, and had Albert made the effort to rush to Bristol, it is conceivable
the entire history of Jack’s life might have been changed. Jack
was as hurt by his failure to do so as Albert had been by Jack’s
spending two weeks of his previous leave with the Moores, and the rift
between them that these two events caused was to last for a long time
and in fact was never properly healed.
The First World War was different from any other war before or since.
Throughout the history of man’s fighting himself, soldiers have
always journeyed to the battlefield, fought, killed, and died, and then
journeyed away again, either to fight again somewhere else or to go
home; but World War I was different, horrifyingly different. In this
war men journeyed to the battlefield and fought, killed, died, and then
stayed. They stayed in the filth, the destruction, the fire and the
blood of the battle; there they lived for days, weeks, months, and even
years. Their homes were holes dug into the mire of earth so churned
by shelling and bombing for month after month that it was a rancid mess
of mixed mud and blood. The very earth of their world was putrid and
rotting. This was the most disgusting and ghastly war of all man’s
ferocities. In its blood-soaked madness, ten million young men died.
---
So Jack was sent off to war after only four weeks of training. To
the hell of fire, explosions, waist-deep blood-soaked mud, constant
shelling, and mortar bomb attacks. To louse-infested clothes and rat-infested
shelters, which were dug out of the walls of trenches in fields so blasted
by high explosives that nothing living remained in the churned-up raw
soil. There were no trees on the battlefield, no plants, just disease,
fire, smoke, mud, blood, the dead, and those creatures that feed upon
them. He arrived at the front line and took up his duties in the trenches
on his nineteenth birthday, November 29, 1917. He had been in France
only twelve days. It is hard to understand today just how this could
happen: boys, straight out of school, trained for four weeks, and then
thrown into the terrible tortuous mess of war, but we have to remember
that the mismanagement of this war was such that England and Germany
were both simply running out of men. So many had been killed so quickly
that there just weren’t enough young men left to replace them,
so boys were given the minimum of training and sent off to kill and
to die. Surprisingly (and he was as surprised as anyone was), Jack was
a brave soldier and a good officer. Jack had no illusions about his
own knowledge of warfare or about his training, and he soon learned
that his sergeant, a Sgt. Ayers, knew far more than he ever wanted to
learn. This wise man told Jack things like, “The most dangerous
thing in the army is a lieutenant with a map,” and it was he who
taught Jack what he needed to know to be a reasonably good officer for
the five months of combat that he was to survive. It was also this man
whose death saved Jack’s life.
Jack fought through months of experiences that he talked about only
rarely, and he learned some things he would rather not have known, and
others, which left with him a glow that lasted all his life. One of
these latter was the fact that no matter what background they came from,
there was a kind of loving friendship and comradeship that the shocking
and desperate conditions of their lives bred in the men who were compelled
to live and die together in this stinking squalor. Jack learned to live
in mud, to shave with a
razor dipped in a cup of tea shared by half a dozen officers. He learned
to eat whatever food was put before him often within both the sight
and smell of dead men, both friend and foe. He learned how to tell the
nationality of a dead soldier by the smell of the body as it began to
rot. He learned to hurl bombs and bullets at men no older than himself
and against whom he held no grudge. He learned to relinquish his humanity
and to become a beast of prey.
And all the while, he was writing and reading. It is perhaps surprising,
but books were available in the trenches, precious books brought out
by officers and men and passed from hand to hand and read again and
again until they fell completely to pieces, and a piece of rubber or
string was then used to hold the pages together until the mud, blood,
and fire finally destroyed them. They were for the most part novels,
and stories, and also some of the great poets. The soldiers read anything
that could and would take their minds far away from the war. The books
were read in a sort of desperation to while away the incredibly long
and dreary hours of inactivity between the frenzied bouts of savage
fighting. In the trenches Jack worked on a series of poems finally titled
Spirits in Bondage, which became his first published book, appearing
in 1918 under the name “Clive Hamilton,” and also a work
of poetry called Dymer, which came out in 1926 under his own name. This
was the beginning of his habit of writing wherever he was and no matter
what the circumstances of his life. In a sense it was his way of escaping
anything unpleasant that was happening to him. In this way the war,
which finished so much for so many people, also began many things in
Jack’s life and a career that may well have needed the kick-start
that only this experience could have provided.
When I began, as ignorant young men will, to speak of war and warriors
with words of admiration and began to show that I had some idea that
there was something glorious about it all, Jack told me about a lot
of his experiences in World War I. Many of the things that happened
to him, and to thousands of others, were absolutely horrible, like the
times when he and his men would advance across the land between the
trenches of the two armies, “no-man’s-land” as they
called it; and on the way, some of the men would become bogged down
in waist-deep mud. Jack and the platoon couldn’t stop to pull
them out but had to keep on advancing according to their orders, so
they left the men where they were, and then after the attack was over
and they were returning to their own trenches, they would often find
these men again, physically unharmed but completely mindless, as if
the horrors of spending a day trapped in the vile stinking morass and
seeing the battle go on all around them while they were unable even
to move simply snapped their minds and reduced them to nothingness.
Others things were amusing. Like the time that he and his platoon were
approaching the shell-destroyed remains of a French farmhouse. Something
made Jack suspicious of it, so he discussed it with his sergeant, and
they decided that the sergeant would take a skirmishing party of men
with fixed bayonets around to the back of the house and charge into
it, while Jack and the rest of the platoon remained under cover at the
front. Jack heard his men go roaring into the house and stood up to
see what was happening. As soon as he did, about thirty young German
soldiers came running out of the front of the house throwing their rifles
away and holding their hands high above their heads. More followed a
moment or so later. Jack felt so sorry for these young men who were
obviously completely terrified that without really thinking, he walked
up to the officers who were leading them and tried to talk to them.
It later turned out that these men had heard a rumor that the British
were shooting all prisoners. Jack was so excited and tense that he forgot
all of his German, and all of any foreign language that he knew except
French, and when he addressed them in French, they promptly fell to
their knees and began to beg for mercy. It seems that the French actually
were shooting prisoners. Jack finally managed to calm them down, and
they were getting to their feet to march off as prisoners of war when
the sergeant approached Jack and suggested that it might have looked
better had he at least drawn his pistol. Jack said that for some reason
it had never even crossed his mind. He also learned that there are no
atheists in the trenches. When the shells start to fall and explode
among them, everybody starts to pray. I learned from Jack and Warnie
that no matter what people or newspapers or politicians try to tell
you, there is no glory in war.
Jack was soon to be hospitalized with trench fever, a severe flu-like
illness transmitted by lice, but was returned to the front as soon as
he recovered. On April 15, 1918, Jack was ordered to advance his troops
behind a barrage of British shells fired by big guns from far behind
the lines. The shells were supposed to advance before them and fall
and explode ahead of them as they went, the idea being to clear the
area into which they advanced of enemy troops. That was the plan, but
typical of the mismanagement of that war, something went wrong. Soon
the howling shells hurtled overhead to rain down with deafening explosions.
Jack ordered his men over the top of the trench parapet and led them
straight toward the enemy as the barrage of high explosives riddled
with shrapnel landed ahead of them, blasting the German trenches and
soldiers. Then suddenly, as they advanced with bayonets at the ready,
the barrage stopped advancing and began to come back toward them. Soon
Jack and his men were being bombarded by their own artillery from far
behind them, and to his helpless fury Jack watched his men being blown
to pieces in the constant roar of their own artillery support. Suddenly
Jack saw a blinding light, everything went completely silent, and then
the ground came up slowly and hit him in the face. Jack had been hit
by both the concussion and shrapnel from a British shell. His trusted
sergeant had been between Jack and the shell when it exploded and was
blown to bits. Apart from his own efforts to escape, Jack remembered
nothing more of the battle.
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