“Wish I was at home for Christmas,” runs the chorus of Stop the Cavalry, the seasonal anti-war pop song, in a lyric that voices the dreams of serving soldiers down the ages. The same poignant sentiment is illustrated in the rediscovered drawings of the first world war trench artist and cartoonist Henry Page. But Page, who was a young private in the London Regiment, also wishes he could be at home for spring, summer, and autumn too, “in the arms of the girl I love”.
His landscape sketches and studies of fellow soldiers have been unearthed by researchers working at Southwark Archives in south London and offer an astonishing fresh insight into the life of troops who survived in close quarters and travelled together through countries very unlike their homeland. Many of Page’s drawings also express his love for his “girl” back home, Edith Pedley – a young woman he was later to marry and live with happily for 56 years until his death.
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