What do you think?
Rate this book
For Love and Courage: The Letters of Lieutenant Colonel E.W. Hermon from the Western Front 1914-1917
Extracts from a unique collection of First World War letters provide a moving legacy of one soldier’s love and courage and a fascinating insight into life on the frontline.
Lt. Colonel E.W. Hermon died in a hail of bullets on the 9th of April 1917, the first day of the battle of Arras, leading his men of the 24th Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers into the attack. He was shot through the heart, one bullet slicing through the letters in his top pocket, including the four-leaf clover his wife had given him for good luck.
This could have been the end of the story but he left a testament of his life and ideals in a unique and hitherto unknown and unpublished collection of long and detailed letters he wrote to his darling wife and his children, “the Chugs.” Now, nearly a century after his death, he speaks to us of a past, less cynical life, where selflessness, honour, duty and courage were admired above all else.
The letters have been transcribed and edited by Hermon’s granddaughter Anne Nason with the help of James Holland, the distinguished historian. The letters are believed to be unique in their candour and context since Hermon was Battalion Commander and thus his letters were not censored.
Lt. Colonel E.W. Hermon died in a hail of bullets on the 9th of April 1917, the first day of the battle of Arras, leading his men of the 24th Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers into the attack. He was shot through the heart, one bullet slicing through the letters in his top pocket, including the four-leaf clover his wife had given him for good luck.
This could have been the end of the story but he left a testament of his life and ideals in a unique and hitherto unknown and unpublished collection of long and detailed letters he wrote to his darling wife and his children, “the Chugs.” Now, nearly a century after his death, he speaks to us of a past, less cynical life, where selflessness, honour, duty and courage were admired above all else.
The letters have been transcribed and edited by Hermon’s granddaughter Anne Nason with the help of James Holland, the distinguished historian. The letters are believed to be unique in their candour and context since Hermon was Battalion Commander and thus his letters were not censored.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 23, 2026
For Love and Courage, are the Great War correspondence of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hermon to his wife Ethel. Only one letter from Ethel was in the collection. Ann inherited these letters on the death of her mother Mary, finding them unopened. Upon reading them she called them a testament to the love her grandparents showed to each other and decided to edit and publish.
I have recently read Somewhere in France: The Collected Letters of Lewis Windermere Nott January - December 1916 by David Nott and it has been interesting to read both collections one after the other. So very different but so very much the same. Both deeply human windows into the Western Front during the Great War.
In the earlier letter from the summer of 1916, Hermon’s correspondence is notable for their domesticity. Writing on 17 August 1916, he thanks Ethel for a pressed keepsake, noting how fitting it was since his unit wore a shamrock insignia: "My Battalion wears a black one & each Battalion has a different colour. Really dearie, yours is awfully nice & I simply love it & so very nicely got up!"
The letters also capture surreal glimpses of war life, from awkward social encounters uch as a British officer inadvertently proposing a toast to the Republic in a household of staunch French Royalists, to light-hearted banter about her thoughts on Paris, by teasing her about the "wandering of your very low mind."
Yet beneath the humour lies honesty of being away at war. When Ethel tore up a letter detailing her own domestic struggles to spare him pain, Hermon wrote to her on 14 September 1916, insisting on complete reciprocity: "I don’t want letters written for my benefit only. If you are down on your luck, I can at least write & do my best to cheer you up... the aching is by no means on your side alone, I can tell you."
By spring of 1917 near Arras, Hermon now commanded the 24th (Tyneside Irish) Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers and with that the letters tones shift. The sheer exhaustion of continuous command begins to show. Writing on 25 March 1917, Hermon writes of a church service held in a Church Army Hut while German 5.9"-inch" shells crashed into the village half a mile away, admitting that "my voice was not particularly strong as I sang the third verse of hymn 322" in what was a plea for divine mercy and strength to persevere. By 7 April 1917, on the eve of the Arras offensive, he writes of three days spent in trenches deep with mud, longing only for quiet, yet marvelling at the stoicism of his men while acknowledging the quiet toll of the barrage. "The guns make life quite unbearable in the house & now I’m down in a cellar... I must go to bed now as I must store up what energy I can."
Two days later, on 9 April 1917, Hermon was killed shortly after 6:00 a.m. while leading his troops across open ground. The enemy bullet passed through his breast pocket, slicing through his family photos and the very four-leaf clover Ethel had sent him months earlier. His final words to his Adjutant were "Go on!". Ethel continued to write to him, unaware of his death until receiving the War Office telegram on 13 April with her final letter was returned unopened, marked "Killed in Action."
As with my previous read of published letters from the Great War, Somewhere in France, I do wonder how the Hermon’s may have felt about their letters being published. Be that as it may these are again valuable insights into the pressure of an officer serving in the trenchs.
I have recently read Somewhere in France: The Collected Letters of Lewis Windermere Nott January - December 1916 by David Nott and it has been interesting to read both collections one after the other. So very different but so very much the same. Both deeply human windows into the Western Front during the Great War.
In the earlier letter from the summer of 1916, Hermon’s correspondence is notable for their domesticity. Writing on 17 August 1916, he thanks Ethel for a pressed keepsake, noting how fitting it was since his unit wore a shamrock insignia: "My Battalion wears a black one & each Battalion has a different colour. Really dearie, yours is awfully nice & I simply love it & so very nicely got up!"
The letters also capture surreal glimpses of war life, from awkward social encounters uch as a British officer inadvertently proposing a toast to the Republic in a household of staunch French Royalists, to light-hearted banter about her thoughts on Paris, by teasing her about the "wandering of your very low mind."
Yet beneath the humour lies honesty of being away at war. When Ethel tore up a letter detailing her own domestic struggles to spare him pain, Hermon wrote to her on 14 September 1916, insisting on complete reciprocity: "I don’t want letters written for my benefit only. If you are down on your luck, I can at least write & do my best to cheer you up... the aching is by no means on your side alone, I can tell you."
By spring of 1917 near Arras, Hermon now commanded the 24th (Tyneside Irish) Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers and with that the letters tones shift. The sheer exhaustion of continuous command begins to show. Writing on 25 March 1917, Hermon writes of a church service held in a Church Army Hut while German 5.9"-inch" shells crashed into the village half a mile away, admitting that "my voice was not particularly strong as I sang the third verse of hymn 322" in what was a plea for divine mercy and strength to persevere. By 7 April 1917, on the eve of the Arras offensive, he writes of three days spent in trenches deep with mud, longing only for quiet, yet marvelling at the stoicism of his men while acknowledging the quiet toll of the barrage. "The guns make life quite unbearable in the house & now I’m down in a cellar... I must go to bed now as I must store up what energy I can."
Two days later, on 9 April 1917, Hermon was killed shortly after 6:00 a.m. while leading his troops across open ground. The enemy bullet passed through his breast pocket, slicing through his family photos and the very four-leaf clover Ethel had sent him months earlier. His final words to his Adjutant were "Go on!". Ethel continued to write to him, unaware of his death until receiving the War Office telegram on 13 April with her final letter was returned unopened, marked "Killed in Action."
As with my previous read of published letters from the Great War, Somewhere in France, I do wonder how the Hermon’s may have felt about their letters being published. Be that as it may these are again valuable insights into the pressure of an officer serving in the trenchs.
June 26, 2014
A very moving insight into life as a staff officer in the trenches and upper middle class family life. Full of humanity and vivid detail and a rare insight into the outlook of the period. So much of what we read about WW1 is written later as memoir or reflection. These letters are truly contemporary. Well worth a read, highly commended
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews