Michael L Nash examines William Noel Hodgson’s take on the Great War
When William Noel Hodgson, MC, Bombing Officer of the 9th Devonshire Regiment, heard that his sister Stella was pregnant, he wrote to her: “Good Luck to you, and your 1936 soldier”. Later, he added, “If he’s a he I hope he’s luckier than his Uncle Bill, and doesn’t get involved in silly squabbles of European potentates”.
This somehow seems to sum up the futility of war and the resignation of soldiers since time began. It also poignantly pinpoints the effect it had on the future biographer of this particular soldier, Charlotte Zeepvat. She had first noticed his name as a soldier-poet when she was a child of seven or eight years old, and, as she says: “His story lived in the recesses of my mind, tied by a fine thread of memory to November poppies….” It was a story she was to research in meticulous detail, and which is now published as Before Action: William Noel Hodgson and the 9th Devons
