The life of Reginald Bateman: English professor, war casualty

1. Reginald Bateman, the Great
War, and the University

3. 1883

6. The children of Godfrey and Emily
Bateman
• Florence Emily, 1882
• Reginald John Godfrey, 1883
• Ernest Maunsell, 1886-1979
• Edgar Noel, 1888-1929
• Arthur Cyril, 1890-1918
• Godfrey, 1892-1942
• John Victor, 1897-1986

12. 1909

18. He impressed me very favourably as a
modest likeable fellow with no airs

19. He seems to me to be a simple-minded
young Irishman frank and without much
experience of the world
So far as I saw there was nothing boastful

20. I got hold of a pamphlet about
Saskatoon which makes it out to be
an Earthly Paradise on a small scale,
so I am quite looking forward to
sharing in its delights. My people use
to sympathise with me for having to
go to the “Wild West” but this
unfortunate pamphlet has put a stop
to all that.

28. Summer in Saskatchewan

29. July-August 1914

31. October 25, 1914

32. Leuven, Belgium 25 August 1914

33. Leuven, Belgium 25-26 August 1914

34. Winnipeg, 1 November 1914

35. 4 November 1914
From Privates Brehaut
and Bateman to His
Beloved Excellency the President,
greeting.
We are both well and
getting very fit
the grub
is good and we are
enjoying it all

38. May 1915

39. 1-6 July 1915

43. 12 July, 1915
There are many things about this
life that I like and
many things that are irksome. On
the whole, I am looking forward to
the conclusion of
the whole matter and just making
the best of things
until then

44. September 1915

45. September 1915 – March 1916

46. September 1915 – March 1916

47. September 1915 – March 1916

48. 196th (Western Universities Battalion, 1916

49. March 1916

50. April 22, 1916

52. St Eloi, April 1916

53. Private Fraser’s Diary, 4 April 1916
When day broke, the sights that met our gaze
were so horrible and ghastly that they beggar
description. Heads, arms and legs were
protruding from the mud at every yard and
dear knows how many bodies the earth
swallowed. Thirty corpses were at least
showing [in] the crater and beneath its clayey
waters other victims must be lying killed and
drowned

54. June 22, 1916
PS By the way, I would suggest that
Communications concerning the
Company should in future be
addressed to me

55. 15 October 1916
I can’t
say that the prospect of returning to
the front gives me any pleasure. All
sense of romance has gone out of the
business for me, and it is now a matter
of grim necessity

57. October 1916

59. April 29, 1917

61. June 13, 1917
I confess I can’t see the
point of keeping up the
pretence that
that battalion is still in
existence, unless you
are doing it for
political reasons, and
I certainly don’t think
that men should be
told that they are being sent
to a batallion which
exists only in your own
imaginations

62. June, 1917

63. June, 1917 – November 1917

64. Passchendaele, November 1917 –
Lieven Summer1918

65. July 9, 1918
nearly four years of army
life have not improved my
knowledge of literature

66. Amiens, August 1918

68. Dury, Hindenburg Line, 2-3 September 1918

69. October 22, 1918
Reg and
other officers were killed by
a big bursting shell which
came down almost vertically
on my dear son killing him
on the spot

70. October 22, 1918
The remains of my son, owing to
the heavy shellfire and the necessity
of all available men as stretcher bearers could
not be brought back to the
cemetery, but on the evening of the
4th September the chaplain, Captain Buck,
gathered a party who amid the roar
of guns and the scream of shells paid
their last respects to a ‘very gallant
comrade and one of the best loved
men in the battalion’

71. Reginald John Godfrey Bateman,
12 October 1883 – 3 September 1918

72. February 23, 1919
I would
consider it a favour if you let
me know what are the chances
of his getting such in Canada
or the United States.

73. John Victor Bateman, 1897-1986
University of Saskatchewan 1920-1961

75. Arthur Cyril Bateman
30 October 1890 – 28 March 1918

79. October 22, 1918
Godfrey Bateman to Walter Murray
My eyes fill as
they write, my beloved one in a foreign
land, red with his blood which he
shed for it, for me, for honour, for truth,
for all that makes life worth living. Was his life
wasted? No, a thousand times, No.

80. Leon Woolf In Flanders Fields
It remains to be said, as usual, that the war
ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh
day of the eleventh month of 1918. It had
meant nothing, solved nothing, and proved
nothing; and in so doing had killed
8,538,315 men and variously wounded
21,219,452.”
Ezra Pound Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
There died a myriad
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization.

81. August 4, 1915
Godfrey Bateman to Walter Murray
He enjoyed himself thoroughly
but had to leave too soon. His mother,
sister and youngest brother who is devoted to
him saw him off. As the mail
boat went from her berth, getting up
steam and very soon into her full
stride, we ie John Victor and I ran
along the pier to get a view as long
as we could of him