Queer Places:
Granezza British Cemetery, 36046 Lusiana, Province of Vicenza
St Barnabas, 88 Sackville Rd, Hove BN3 3HE, UK
Edward
Harold Brittain, MC (30
November 1895 – 15 June 1918) was a British
Army officer who was killed in the First
World War; he was immortalised by his sister Vera
Brittain in Testament
of Youth. Published in August 1933, her autobiography quickly became a best-seller, acclaimed as the woman's book of the war. However in the summer of 1934, almost a year after the book's appearance, Vera Brittain received a letter from Edward's commanding officer, informing her that certain facts of a "personal" nature surrounding Edward's death had been withheld from her. On further questioning, the officer revealed that shortly before the action in which Edward was killed, he had learned that Edward was being investigated by the military police. Letters written to Edward by another officer, while on leave, had been censored at the base. From these it was apparently plain that Edward had been involved in homosexual relations with men in his company. The commanding officer had given Edward a warning of the investigation, and, the following day, Edward had been killed.
Brittain was born at Macclesfield,
Cheshire, to paper manufacturer Thomas Arthur Brittain (1864–1935) and his
wife Edith Bervon (1868–1948). His only sibling was his older sister
Vera, to whom he was very close. Brittain was educated at Uppingham
School, where he made two close friends, Roland
Leighton and Victor
Richardson. Brittain was a good student, though seldom a prizewinner, at
Uppingham and also served in the Officers'
Training Corps. A talented violinist, he hoped to become a composer, but
his father expected him to enter either the family paper-making firm or the
Civil Service.
Brittain left school in July 1914, just before the First World War broke
out. He had been admitted to New
College, Oxford, but after the outbreak of hostilities he joined the
British Army and was commissioned as
a temporary second
lieutenant into the Sherwood
Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment) on 19 November 1914.[1] He
remained in England for the first year and a half of the war; he was held back
from several transfers to the front by his colonel who was not impressed by
Edward's supercilious attitude. During this period, he became close friends
with fellow officer Geoffrey Thurlow.
Thurlow, a sensitive scholar who wanted to become a priest, had returned to
the front despite being badly shell-shocked.’ Geoffrey was killed in action in
1917.
Leighton, who had been serving on the Western
Front, died of wounds in December 1915, and soon afterwards, in early
1916, Brittain was posted to the Western Front. He was wounded in the left arm
and the right thigh in the Battle
of the Somme on 1
July 1916. Lieutenant Brittain was sent to First
London General Hospital, where his sister was then working as a V.A.D.
nurse. He was subsequently awarded the Military
Cross for his service on the Somme. The citation stated that Brittain was
awarded the M.C. "For conspicuous gallantry and leadership during an attack.
He was severely wounded, but continued to lead his men with great bravery and
coolness until a second wound disabled him."[2][3]
Brittain remained in England, recuperating and then on light duty, until 30
June 1917. Thurlow was killed in action at Monchy-le-Preux in April 1917;
Richardson was blinded at Arras in April 1917, and died from a cerebral
abscess in London in June 1917. These losses transformed Brittain, in his
sister's words, into "an unfamiliar, frightening Edward, who never smiled or
spoke except about trivial things ... Silent, uncommunicative, thrust in upon
himself."[4] Brittain
returned to the Western Front almost exactly a year after he had left it and
was immediately sent into battle, without knowing either the terrain or the
men he was commanding, but emerged unscathed. His letters became increasingly
critical of the conduct of the war. Vera Brittain was posted to a British
hospital in northern France in August 1917, but the siblings never managed to
see each other in France. Brittain was made a temporary captain in August 1917[5] and
was sent to the Italian
Front with the 11th Sherwood Foresters in November 1917. He saw his family
for the last time on leave in January 1918. On 15 June 1918 on the Asiago Plateau,
Captain Brittain was shot in the head and killed during an early morning
counter-attack against an Austrian offensive, part of the Battle
of the Piave River. In June 1918, army censors had read a letter from
Brittain that indicated he had had homosexual relations with men in his
company. His commanding
officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles
Hudson, was notified that Brittain would be court-martialled when he came
out of the line. Hudson was told not to warn Brittain, but he warned him
obliquely anyway. His commanding officer believed that Brittain put himself in
harm's way to avoid a court
martial and the shame that this would bring upon his family. Edward's
mother later revealed to Vera that Edward had been involved in homosexual
activities while at Uppingham. Hudson evaded Vera Brittain's questions when
she visited him in hospital in 1918, but told her of his suspicions
after Testament of Youth was published in 1933. She was initially reluctant to
believe that her brother had deliberately exposed himself to danger but
eventually came around to his colonel's interpretation of events and
fictionalised them in her novel Honourable Estate. While researching the
authorised biography of Vera Brittain, Mark
Bostridge tracked down Hudson's son Miles and was permitted to read
Hudson's account of Edward Brittain's last days. In 1995 Bostridge published
details of his discovery in Vera Brittain: A Life, a book of which he and Paul
Berry were the authors.[6][7]
Testament of Youth was written by Vera Brittain and influenced by losing her three best friends; from left to right - Edward Brittain, Vera's brother, Roland Leighton, her fiance, Victor Richardson, her close friend. All died during World War I.
Edward Brittain is buried in Granezza British Cemetery on the Asiago Plateau
in Italy.[8] In
September 1921 Vera Brittain visited the cemetery with Winifred
Holtby, and her will requested that her ashes be scattered on his grave;
"for nearly 50 years much of my heart has been in that Italian village
cemetery".[9] Her
daughter Shirley
Williams honoured her request in September 1970.[10]
Vera wrote a novel, Honourable Estate (1936), in which she depicted a
homosexual character called Richard Alleyndene, the brother of the heroine. To
avoid a court martial for homosexuality, Richard becomes involved in the
Gallipoli campaign with the intention of being killed.
Edward Brittain is commemorated along with Victor Richardson and Roland
Leighton on the war memorial at St
Barnabas Church, Hove; this was the church attended by the Richardson
family. Many of Brittain's letters are published in Letters from a Lost
Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends (1998). His musical setting to his friend Leighton's poem
"L'Envoi" is published in Testament of Youth (1989).
In the 1979
television adaptation of Testament of Youth he was played by Rupert
Frazer, with Cheryl
Campbell taking the part of Vera. In the BBC
Radio 4 adaptation of Letters from a Lost Generation in 1998, Jonathan
Firth took the role of Edward Brittain. In the 2014 film
of Testament of Youth he was portrayed by Taron
Egerton.[11]
In Toby's Room, a
novel by Pat Barker,
published in 2012, the fate of the central character of Toby is based on that
of Edward Brittain, though the source material is neither cited nor
acknowledged.[12]
In the 2018 BBC Radio 4 programme Edward Brittain and the Forgotten Front,
Baroness Williams followed the footsteps of her mother to the grave of her
uncle.[13]
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