Скачать или смотреть The very first chapter of Basil Rathbone's autobiography "In and out of Character" had me choked up

In 1918 Basil wrote the following heartbreaking letter to his father after both his brother’s and mother’s deaths.

July 26th
Wed morning
Dear father – We came up from the reserves a while ago, and just before we left I had your letter and also the parcel from uncle H. Please thank uncle and all the family especially the girls for their dear little poems. The whisky has already proved helpful. I shared the cake with my men and it was consumed in three minutes and pronounced to be pretty fair, which is high praise.

I’m sorry for the awful handwriting but it’s very cold and I’m shivering terribly and there’s only an inch of candle left in the dugout to write by and it flickers. It’s 3.50 ack emma, so bitterly cold I’m wearing my great coat though it’s July, but it’s been a quiet night, and when I was out I caught a nice moon, very bright between little bits of cloud. I think it will be a very bright and sweet and warm day again like yesterday. Cloudless and a little breeze. Just the day for cricket.

Today will be quite a busy one and so I want to send this before it gets going.

I have all of Johnny’s letters parcelled up together and I will either bring them home on my next leave or arrange for someone to deliver them in person. I would send them as you asked but I would be afraid of them being lost. The communication trenches can take a beating and nothing can be relied on. If I can’t bring them myself for any reason there is a good sort here, another Lieutenant in our company who is under oath to deliver them, and who I have never known to shirk or break his word. So, you will get them, come what may.

I’m sorry not to have written much the past weeks. It was unfair and you are very kind not to be angry. You ask how I have been since we heard, well, if I am honest with you, and I may as well be, I have been seething. I was so certain it would be me first of either of us. I’m even sure it was supposed to be me and he somehow contrived in his wretched Johnny-fashion to get in my way just as he always would when he was small. I want to tell him to mind his place. I think of his ridiculous belief that everything would always be well, his ever-hopeful smile, and I want to cuff him for a little fool. He had no business to let it happen and it maddens me that I shall never be able to tell him so, or change it or bring him back. I can’t think of him without being consumed with anger at him for being dead and beyond anything I can do to him.

I’m afraid it’s not what you hoped for from me and perhaps that’s why I haven’t written. I suspect you want me to say some sweet things about him. I wish I could for your sake, but I don’t have them to say. Out here we step over death every day. We stand next to it while we drink our tea. It’s commonplace and ordinary. People who had lives and tried to hold on to them and didn’t, and now slump and stare and melt slowly to nothing. You meet their eyes, or what used to be their eyes and you feel ashamed. And now Johnny is one of them. That’s an end of it. Grieving is only ridiculous in this place. It could be me today or tomorrow and I shouldn’t want anyone to bother grieving over that.

Stand to is being called. I have to go now. God bless you and Bea. You are both dearer to me than I could ever say. Take very good care of each other won’t you.
with my best love
PSB.

Sources: https://www.basilrathbone.net/biograp... , https://thegreatbaz.wordpress.com/ , and “In & Out of Character”
Book by Basil Rathbone