It is said that every family in Britain was touched by the first world war but
few could have felt its tragic sting more keenly than Rudyard Kipling. The
author who entranced children with The Jungle Book and his Just So stories
was also a fervent wartime propagandist whose intervention led his beloved
teenage son, John, to die amid the carnage of the trenches. The decision
tormented him for the rest of his life.
John Kipling’s death in France at the age of 18 was a metaphor for the
blindness of a conflict in which a whole generation volunteered to fight
against Germany. Chronically shortsighted, he was killed on his first day of
action, unable to see a thing. In torrential rain, he could either have
taken his glasses off and seen nothing, or kept them on with the same
result. That day there were 7,500 casualties, rising to 50,000 by the end of
the battle.
Two years later, after a futile crusade to locate his son’s body and give it a
proper burial, Kipling wrote a powerful epitaph that became the universal
voice of every teenager who had perished:
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
With the ear of the prime minister and of the king, Kipling had been a
powerful advocate of the war and a recruiter who believed that in order to
preserve the British Empire as a benign and essential force of world
stability, an aggressive empire-building Germany should be stopped.
He had once proclaimed: “We must demand that every fit young man come forward
to enlist and that every young man who chooses to remain at home be shunned
by his community.”
His letters to John – from boyhood to the young man’s early death – help to
explain the depth of his later remorse. While confirming his great love for
the boy, they show a father trying to instil his ideals and self-discipline
into his son. Even before John is 16, Kipling is writing about getting him
into the army. John’s own letters to his parents during the last few weeks
of his life add to the poignancy of the tragedy.
In these extracts, Kipling first writes to John when the boy is 10 and at
boarding school.
RK to JK May 8, 1908: I do hope that you will go up a form this term on
the strength of your Latin and Mathematics. You are quite all right if you
will only think; when you don’t think you ought to be kicked. I regret I
have not kicked you enough. I’ll look out for the next number of the Captain
[a boys’ magazine]; you look out for your school work.
RK to Elsie Kipling [John’s sister] July 29: Your Little Brother
returned from school yesterday . . . The young imp sang nearly all the way
home . . . When we got home he ran about till he got the bat and the stumps
and made me bowl to him. He sat up to dinner at 7.30 and went to bed at 8.30
about as blissfully happy a young mortal as I’ve ever seen.
RK to JK October 6: Your last letter was a beauty as far as its length
but it was vilely spelt. I don’t think I have ever seen quite so many
mistakes in so few lines. Howe wood you lick it if I rote you a leter al ful
of mispeld wurds? I no yu know kwite well howe to spel onli yu wonte taik
the trubble to thinck!
RK to JK June 16, 1909: You are now getting on in life and I want your
behav-iour to correspond with your years. Therefore, O my Son, do all that
you can to win honestly and fairly the events for which you have entered. If
you win, shut your head. Exalt not yourself nor your legs nor your wind nor
anything else that is yours. To boast (not that you are given to it) is the
mark of the Savage and the Pig.
RK to JK November 16, 1912: Well, I must say that, if you don’t send
news often, your news when it comes is quite exciting. As to the beating
that doesn’t matter . . . I am only very glad that you didn’t
show that it hurt . . . Another result of your little experience ought to be
to make you dig out and work like the devil to get up the school. You are
fifteen and a quarter now and I want to see you in a position where it won’t
be possible for you to be beaten. I haven’t the least doubt that you played
for the wopping . . .
RK to JK May 5, 1913: Just a line to say I’m back at Bateman’s [the
Kiplings’ family home in Sussex] after the Academy dinner – dd dull: but I
met Ward [Sir Edward Ward, undersecretary for war] there and talked about
getting you into the army. He says he is going to write to the head of the
Examining (physical) Board and suggests you might be examined privately just
as a preliminary canter. In the meantime I suggest you wear your pince-nez
as much as you can and try to get used to ’em. They give a man a different
expression as opposed to spectacles.
No news except it’s beastly cold and I’m rather lonesome for lack of a Friend &
Ally to play with. Remember to dig out this term and let me know what a
“presentation” to Sand-hurst means. Is it a sort of letter of recommendation
from your Head-master? You’ll never get it if it is.
RK to JK October 3: I wish I didn’t miss you as much as I do, old man.
You were a huge nuisance at times but I seem to have got fond of you in some
incomprehensible way.
There is a gap in Kipling’s surviving letters until September 1914. By
then, the first world war has started and John is a 17-year-old ensign in
the Irish Guards stationed at Warley Barracks in Essex. Some of his own,
often badly spelt, letters to his parents have also survived.
RK to Elsie Kipling September 28, 1914:. . . Saturday came John in full
canonicals by the 5.44. He very much becomes the uniform . . . It was a
changed John in many respects but all delightful. A grave and serious John
with an adorable smile and many stories of his men . . . The Irish Guards I
gather are racially and incurably mad – which of course suits J down to the
ground . . . I am immensely pleased with our boy. The old spirit of carping
and criticism has changed into a sort of calm judicial attitude.
RK to JK March 23, 1915: Yesterday Mums and I went down to St Leonards
to see old Mademoiselle [former governess to John and Elsie] . . . she
couldn’t understand why you were in the Army at all. “If there is no
compulsion,” she said, “why should John enter the Army?” “Precisely because
there is no compulsion,” says Mother . . .
From JK May 30: I went on the “Razlle-Dazlle” last night. Diner at
Princes, Alhambra & Empire next, then supper at the Savoy, then Murays &
two other night-clubs of lesser repute. I left Town in the Singer [his car]
at 10 past 3am & got here [Warley Barracks, Brentwood, Essex] at 7
minutes to 4 (43 mins); that is “going some”. I only met 2 tax-ies &
a cart on the way down & being broad daylight I could move like hell.
From JK July 5: Just in from a 15 mile walk. Talk about heat. My hat!!
I commanded my company and walked ahead with Kerry [Earl of Kerry, commander
of the 2nd Battalion the Irish Guards]. He told me definitely that I would
be the first ensign to go out to France after the 17th of August [John’s
18th birthday], and I would have been too young then if I hadn’t had a
year’s service in the Brigade. So going in [to the army] early was a damned
good move after all.
RK to JK July 6:It is a comfort to get your notice in good time. Kerry,
however, was wrong in one respect. It is not the mere fact of your having
been in the Brigade for a year that has made you what you are. It is because
you deliberately went into it for a purpose and gave yourself up to the job
of becoming a good officer. (I have heard indirectly from another source
that you are considered to be “damned smart”) . . . We are both more proud
of you than words can say . . .
I do hope you’ll be able to pull off Bateman’s this weekend. There are
reliable rumours of strawberries. And now, old thing, keep fit, so that you
may go out with a full banking account of sleep and strength to your credit.
On his 18th birthday John celebrates his first day in France, having
arrived with a spare pair of glasses and his father’s written authorisation
for him to fight.
From JK August 17: Although away from Bateman’s this is a fine birthday
. . . Please send 1 pair roomy carpet slippers, 2 towels seize [sic] of face
towel but rough, 2 pairs civilian black socks, 1 pair brigade braces. This
is the life.
From JK August 20, 1915: Here we are billeted in a splendid little
village nestling among the downs about 20 miles from the firing line . . . I
have the great luck of being billeted with the Mayor, who is also the school
master, in his house. I am awfully comfortable, having a feather bed with
sheets & a sitting room for 3 of us, the whole place being absolutely
spotlessly clean. The old Mayor . . . possesses a very pretty daughter –
Marcelle – who is awfully nice and we get on very well . . .
The idea is I believe that we stay here about a fortnight before we go up to
the trenches but one can never tell from one moment to the next what is
going to happen to one next. Please send me a pair of my ordinary pyjamas .
. .
Kipling was himself in France as a war correspondent inspecting the French
lines and he passed on what he saw to John.
RK to JK August 22: The new idea is to put as much strength as you can
in your blockhouses, where the pompoms and machine guns are, and to hold the
trenches as light as possible. Don’t forget the beauty of rabbit netting
overhead against hand grenades. Even tennis netting is better than nothing .
. .
RK to JK August 23: Need I tell you, my dear old man, how I love you,
or how proud I am of you . . . Don’t forget about overhead rabbit netting .
. .
RK to JK August 24: I’m awfully wondering where you are likely to be
sent. If it is anywhere outside our present front – in the direction of the
Argonne or that way, west of Soissons (which may be possible) I think you’ll
find it useful to chip in with my name occasionally among the French. This
isn’t swank but they all seemed to know me.
Dear love. I’m going out in a French taxi. They are burning petrol mixed with
pee. At least that’s how it smells.
From JK August 26: Please don’t send any more underclothes, collars,
shirts & handkerchiefs, as I have ample now & too many will get
lost.
RK to JK August 26: I shall post this in Boulogne which, when you come
to think of it, can’t be more than 20 miles from you. I wish I could have a
look at you with Marcelle. By the way the best dictionary for French is a
dictionary in skirts.
RK to JK August 28: To-day has been filthy hot and I’ve been digging
out over my letters about France – observations on their Army. I repeat, for
about the 5th time, that they employ rabbit wire overhead in their trenches
to guard off bombs. The little pitched roof is supposed to make the bomb
roll off before or behind the trench.
From JK August 29: Many thanks for Dad’s letters. His “tips for the
trenches” are rather quaint. Surely you know it is a standing order never to
have any thing over the top of a trench, even rabbit wires. If the Bosch
comes, he has you like rabbits underneath it.
From JK August 31: Rather a strenuous day. 24 mile march & a day’s
moenuvres. This sort of thing brings the war right to your front door and
drops it there with a bump. Lady BS [wife of Sir John Bland-Sutton, the
Kiplings’ family physician] sent me a topping big sponge cake and I have
just written to thank her.
From JK September [2 or 3]: It keeps on raining here like old Hades.
Will you send me an oilskin coat just the same as those sailor chaps use in
the North Sea, etc. Big black things that don’t stick. Not a civilian one
you get in a shop which is only good for a week . . . No “Burbury” or Mac
will stand up to these soaking rains. You must have an oilskin & a good
one too. We are going to be out all tomorrow night. The trenches ought to be
rather a rest. We go up to them some time next week.
From JK September 10: Many thanks for those parcels you sent me. I now
lack nothing but a pair of sock suspenders. Realy I am rooling in good
things. The oil skin is A-1. I have ample socks now so please don’t send out
anymore till I write for them . . .
Lady Aitken [wife of Kipling’s friend Sir Max Aitken, the future Lord
Beaverbrook] sent me a topping box of chocolates & Lady BS sent me a
huge cake. Really it was awful nice of them . . .
Dad most likely knows what is going to happen out here in ten days. That is
what the Guards Division have been formed for. Sounds mysterious but I can’t
say what it is if you don’t know. So we are moving up shortly.
From JK September 19: If I live to get back again I’m going to get
myself the smartest 2 seater His-pano-Suiza that can be got & get a bit
of enjoyment out of life with it. By Gad to think of it makes me grip my
pencil like a steering wheel, which accounts for the writing . . .
I’ve done enough marching the last month to sicken me of it for life; it is
simply indescribable! – these long blazing strips of dusty roads where you
can see about five Kilometres ahead of you, & staff cars & lorries
covering you with dust.
Many is the time I’ve thought of a hot bath! evening clothes! dinner at the
Ritz! going to the Alhambra after-wards! You people at home don’t realize
how spoilt you are. You don’t realize what excessive luxury surrounds you.
Think of a hot water tap alone.
I find that I didn’t bring out any studs with me. Would you please send me out
3 front studs & 3 back studs; also another pair of pyjamas exactly
similar to the last you sent me. By the way, the next time you are in town
would you get me an Identification Disc as I have gone and lost mine.
From JK September 23: Just a hurried line to let you know what we are
doing. We have begun what I said we were going to do; have been marching for
the last two days . . .
We have had to chuck a good half of our Kits away as the waggons are very
heavily loaded. I will write and tell you what to send later on. It made my
heart bleed to leave a lot of my splendid Kit by the roadside.
Please send me a really good pair of bedroom slippers (fluffy & warm with
strong soles) (not carpet) also a good strong tooth brush.
From JK September 25: Just a hurried line as we start off tonight. The
front line trenches are nine miles off from here so it wont be a very long
march. This is THE great effort to break through & end the war. The guns
have been going deafeningly all day, without a single stop. We have to push
through at all costs so we won’t have much time in the trenches, which is
great luck.
Funny to think one will be in the thick of it tomorrow. One’s first experience
of shell fire not in the trenches but in the open. This is one of the
advantages of a Flying Division; you have to keep moving. We marched 18
miles last night in the pouring wet. It came down in sheets steadily.
They are staking a tremendous lot on this great advancing movement as if it
succeeds the war won’t go on for long. You have no idea what enormous issues
depend on the next few days.
This will be my last letter most likely for some time as we won’t get any time
for writing this next week, but I will try & send Field post cards.
Well so long dears. Dear love John.
He was killed two days later when his unit went into action in what became
known as the battle of Loos. His body was never identified.
Letters extracted from O Beloved Kids, edited by Elliot L Gilbert and
published by Max Press at £9.99. Copies can be ordered for £9.49 including
postage from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585
