REVEREND OSWIN CREIGHTON
ARMY CHAPLAINS' DEPARTMENT
15TH APRIL 1918 AGE 34
BURIED: CHOQUES MILITARY CEMETERY, FRANCE
Oswin Creighton was the son of the author, academic and cleric Mandell Creighton, and his wife Louise Creighton, author and suffragist. Educated at Marlborough and Keble College, Oxford, Oswin was ordained in 1907 and went to work in Canada, which is where he was when the war broke out. It was his mother who chose his inscription since his father, Mandell Creighton, died in 1901. Two years after her son's death, Louise Creighton edited and published a collected edition of Oswin's letters, The Letters of Oswin Creighton. Oswin returned from Canada on the outbreak of war, joined the Army Chaplains' Department and sailed to Gallipoli in March 1915. After the evacuation he spent some time in England before going to France in November 1916. Extracts from his letters chart his changing attitude to the war over three and a half years.
5 August 1914
I expect it may sound foolish my wishing to get back so much. There is nothing I could do, I suppose; but England is my home and I just feel I want to be there.
10 August 1914
There is no doubt England has made herself exeedingly popular. They [Canadians and Americans] feel she is democracy's and liberty's great champion in Europe.
25 September 1914
The more one thinks, the more utterly futile the whole war seems. What has anyone to gain? Why cannot it all be stopped? To what purpose is this waste?
21 October 1914
On the whole there is a calm sense of determination and readiness for any sacrifice, which is very beautiful. It seems impossible to be selfish, and one feels the greatness of England and all that she stands for ...
13 April 1915
I am afraid that when I next write, it will in all probability be a letter giving rather different experiences. There is a tremendously tough time ahead, of that there can be no doubt. Most of the officers seem to take it for granted that they are going to be killed. However, they are quite cheerful about it.
28 April 1915
The fighting started on Sunday morning and has been raging ever since. We have been watching it three miles out to sea for four days now, and have practically no news, beyond the apparently only too certain fact that my two particular regiments [Royal Fusiliers and Lancashire Fusiliers] have been absolutely cut to pieces.
5 May 1915
The strange thing I find is that I am really extremely happy. There is more goodness and true unselfishness and seriousness about on this Peninsular than there is at a race meeting for instance.
14 June 1915
Many of his remaining friends having been killed in a recent battle, Oswin became critical of the way the British effort was being managed. At this time he was working with a field ambulance 500 yards from the front in a narrow gully, Aberdeen Gully, helping the wounded and taking funerals.
19 July 1915
Oswin was in hospital with diptheria.
31 October 1915 back in Gallipoli
What makes Englishmen so stupid? As I sit at my coffee bar and chat with some of the men in the endless line that passes, I always find the Colonial so far quicker and more intelligent, much more of a man. I cannot say I am impressed with the intelligence of Englishmen. Brains are the want out here from top to bottom, ordinary average brains and common sense; and the Colonials have them, but they're not used.
5 December 1915
Oswin is very disillusioned that so little has been done to prepare for the terrible cold of the Peninsular winter, the freezing temperatures, biting winds, snow and ice. Soon after this he was evacuated with jaundice, just before the entire Peninsular was evacuated. He spent most of 1916 in England and then in November was sent to France with an artillery division.
29 May 1917 Arras
When I went to Gallipoli war was new and its experiences had a certain amount of excitement. Now it has become an occupation, and it has a deadening, coarsening effect and one seems to lose interest in most things. More and more the world seems to have lost its charm and to offer little worth living for. Often I have thought that the simplest solution to its many insoluble problems would be to be blown to pieces. ... When you see a lot of people being killed you seem to lose interest in the real world.
28 August 1917
I think the main thing you at home have to realise is that the effects of this war are almost entirely negative. We are strangely disillusioned. I get quite alarmed at the extent of my disillusionment.
10 December 1917
Why can't we hurry peace up. The whole war is really too impossible. We cannot hope to destroy Germany without destroying ourselves, and why go on destroying each other.
20 March 1918
Personally I am enjoying life. We have had no casualties this year. The men are all very comfortable. The weather has been simply wonderful until yesterday when the rain started, and has been going on ever since ...
21 March 1918
The day after this letter, the Germans launched their Spring Offensive along the Western Front, pushing all before them with huge casualties. The German assault was so strong and so successful that many thought the war would soon be over and Germany would have won. Oswin was tremendously proud of the splendid response of all the men in his Division but was still not reconciled to war.
31 March 1918
I can only feel all the more the utter stupidity and imbecility of it all, the way so many men have to put all their energies and strength into such terribly futile things. After all, what can war decide? How hateful it all is.
3 April 1918
The old truth comes back that at whatever cost one must, regardless of all else, cling to the truth, and if possible, friendship.
9 April 1918
The war is to decide for all time whether the superman idea or the democratic is stronger.
Oswin was killed, 'blown to pieces', on 13 April in a massive German bombardment.
Oswin's headstone inscription, like the dedication his mother chose for the book, quotes St Matthew 10:39, which in context reads:
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.