Tag Archives: Inns of Court Regiment

Visitors and ‘victory’

The fact that Calderon wrote to Daniel and Henriette Sturge Moore on Sunday 22 November 1914, but not, as far as we know, to their parents, implies that their parents actually visited George in hospital. This is in any case … Continue reading

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25 September 1914

[From Windmill Hill Camp, Salisbury Plain] Friday Mrs P., So you didn’t have too much of your sleepy mole?  Well, I don’t know about any more upcomings.  Next Sunday, that’s the day after tomorrow, I certainly can’t; it’s too soon; … Continue reading

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Interpreter preparation

Calderon was fluent in French, had ‘learnt Flemish while shaving in the mornings’ (according to his composer friend Martin Shaw), and incredibly enough had once made a special study of Walloon dialects.  His German was also competent.  He had absolutely … Continue reading

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Confusion, or subtlety?

From a hundred years on, it is difficult to make sense of Calderon’s new situation. If he was taking Hedley’s advice that the quickest way of getting to the Front was as a military interpreter, why was he continuing his … Continue reading

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‘The Godfather in War’

About now 1914, George Calderon went again to see his golfing acquaintance Coote Hedley. He turned up at his house at 9.30 in the evening, wearing his O.T.C. ‘reach-me-down’. However, as Hedley told Mrs Hedley, ‘even in that awful old … Continue reading

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…and impatient!

Calderon had not by now heard whether he had been given a commission, so he went to see his golfing acquaintance Lieutenant-Colonel Coote Hedley, who lived not far away in Belsize Avenue, to ask what he, George, could do to … Continue reading

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Determined

Calderon’s approach to issues of the day (Russia, suffragism, unionism) was to study them in depth, analyse them, then decide what was the right course of action for him and stick to it through thick and thin.  This was why … Continue reading

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Writer’s self-block?

There is no evidence that Calderon wrote anything new in 1914 after signing up.  Yet the previous seven months had been packed with literary-theatrical work: he had written or assembled most of his posthumous best-seller Tahiti, finished a pantomime The Brave Little … Continue reading

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14 August 1914

The British Expeditionary Force was still moving up to join the French Fifth Army near the Belgian border, and in London today the weather was ‘grilling hot’ (Mark Bostridge, The Fateful Year).  That evening George Calderon wrote to Clara Calderon in … Continue reading

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A biographer writes…

The main object of ‘Calderonia’ is to post events and documents in a kind of ‘real time’ ; exactly a hundred years after they happened.  And judging by the emails I have received, that’s what people appreciate.  This timeline approach … Continue reading

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Training and War Games

Then we lived in an atmosphere of drill – I don’t only mean the drills etc and general training that he was going through, but at home: books on drill, books on everything, Morse codes, other codes, German military handbooks … Continue reading

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5 August 1914

Note that George Calderon’s ‘Attestation’ simply meant that he had joined the ‘Territorial Force’ and this committed him to ‘Four Years Service in the United Kingdom’.  In his excellent The British Soldier of the First World War (Shire Books, 2010) Peter Doyle … Continue reading

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4 August 1914

At 8 a.m. German troops crossed the Belgian border. In the morning, presumably by telephone, Calderon made an appointment to see the Colonel of the Inns of Court Regiment, who was previously unknown to him. This time George did deploy … Continue reading

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3 August 1914

Of course the Adjutant turned him down – saying he was far too old. It must have been a bitter blow to Calderon, yet it is very unlikely that he showed it. He may have tried to reason, perhaps he … Continue reading

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2 August 1914

Suddenly (he had no time to let Kittie know he was coming), George Calderon returned to London. On 1 August Germany and France mobilised, and the party holidaying on the Isle of Wight soon heard the news. Evey (Captain Pym) … Continue reading

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