Description
Object description
'Souvenir de guerre' (5pp ts in French, with English translation, no date), in which Davis recalls an incident in the central square of Abbeville in northern France in 1917 when he saw a battle-weary French field artillery unit halt temporarily on its way back from the front line, its gunners taking time to contemplate the façade of the church before moving on and prompting him to reflect on the French 'national character' in times of adversity; with copies of miscellaneous documents pertaining to Davis' service in the British Army during the First World War (Intelligence / Field Censor's Staff BEF), including a period of committal to Craiglockhart Military Hospital with 'neurasthenia' ('shell-shock'), where he was a contemporary of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in late 1917, a small number of wartime photographs of Davis in military uniform and of his war medals (including the French Legion of Honour), a 1981 published guide to Bowhill house in Selkirk which served as a military hospital during the First World War and to which he was briefly transferred from Craiglockhart, and an extract from a book on the Ritz Hotel in London which Davis had helped to design before the war as a partner in the architects firm of Mewes & Davis (the documents include copies of wartime correspondence regarding the new Cunard building in Liverpool on which Davis had also worked); unrelated anecdotal memoir (3pp ts) by David Thomas of his Second World War service as a volunteer with the Port of London River Emergency Service (A J Davis was Thomas' father-in-law).
Content description
'Souvenir de guerre' (5pp ts in French, with English translation, no date), in which Davis recalls an incident in the central square of Abbeville in northern France in 1917 when he saw a battle-weary French field artillery unit halt temporarily on its way back from the front line, its gunners taking time to contemplate the façade of the church before moving on and prompting him to reflect on the French 'national character' in times of adversity; with copies of miscellaneous documents pertaining to Davis' service in the British Army during the First World War (Intelligence / Field Censor's Staff BEF), including a period of committal to Craiglockhart Military Hospital with 'neurasthenia' ('shell-shock'), where he was a contemporary of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in late 1917, a small number of wartime photographs of Davis in military uniform and of his war medals (including the French Legion of Honour), a 1981 published guide to Bowhill house in Selkirk which served as a military hospital during the First World War and to which he was briefly transferred from Craiglockhart, and an extract from a book on the Ritz Hotel in London which Davis had helped to design before the war as a partner in the architects firm of Mewes & Davis (the documents include copies of wartime correspondence regarding the new Cunard building in Liverpool on which Davis had also worked); unrelated anecdotal memoir (3pp ts) by David Thomas of his Second World War service as a volunteer with the Port of London River Emergency Service (A J Davis was Thomas' father-in-law).
History note
Cataloguer SWW