Lieutenant The Hon. Edward Wyndham Tennant
4TH GRENADIER GUARDS
THE SON OF LORD GLENCONNER, Liberal MP, a nephew of the prime minister and therefore a cousin of Raymond Asquith who had fallen on 15th September serving with the same regiment, Edward ‘Bim’ (or ‘Bimbo)’ Tennant joined the army at just 17. Nicknamed ‘Boy Wonder’ during his initial training, he had been a keen poet at both prep school and Winchester. Joining the 4th Grenadiers, which counted Harold Macmillan among its officers at the time, the future prime minister recalled Bim as ‘a young man of singular charm and attraction’. It was not only the other officers who were struck by him. The men thought their boyish leader was wonderful. ‘If any of them showed signs of exhaustion on the march, there was no berating from Edward. Instead [he] would help and, shouldering the rifle and pack himself, he carried on.’
Lieutenant the Hon. Edward Tennant. (Authors’ collection)
Bim was sent to the front in the latter half of 1915, in time to see the carnage of the Battle of Loos, which inspired him to write his poem ‘The Mad Soldier’ in 1916. His 19th birthday marked the opening of the Battle of the Somme and on 9th September the Guards arrived to join the fray.
On the day that Edward Cazalet was killed nearby with the Welsh Guards, Bim was also in action, running up and down with messages for the company commanders from headquarters in the mayhem. ‘The trenches were full of men, so I had to go over the open. Several people who were in the trench were saying they expected every shell to blow me to bits.’ He escaped unharmed. ‘We were safely relieved last night,’ he told his mother. When they finally made it out of harm’s way, the Grenadier officers found that someone had managed to get hold of some champagne. ‘That is the time one really does want champagne,’ Bim reflected. ‘When one comes in at 3am, after no sleep for fifty hours, it gives one the strength to undress.’
Preparations were now fully under way for the resumption of the offensive on 25th September and the Guards were to play a leading role. Strong resistance was anticipated and there was much digging to be done to fashion communication and assembly trenches for the battle. It was an exhausting march up for Bim’s battalion through significant congestion and over horrible ground thanks to the recent rain. The only road available to them was stuffed with transports and guns, and the mud was so deep that they could barely wade through it. The guides themselves were lost, the communication trench leading up was blocked by decomposing corpses, and it was 3am before they got into place. The front-line trench that the Grenadiers now manned was too shallow and not at all bulletproof. Enemy snipers were everywhere. Bim was seemingly determined to keep his spirits up. ‘I am full of hope and trust,’ he wrote to his family. ‘The pride of being in such a regiment! … I have never been prouder of anything, except your love for me, than I am of being a Grenadier.’
Bim’s company was placed in the line near Combles, south-east of Guillemont. It was holding a sap that was shared with the Germans, the two groups of combatants separated by a simple block. On the night of 21st/22nd September he was out passing the time with a spot of sniping when there was some movement in the German lines. Bim loosed off his revolver and a moment later he was killed, shot through the head by an enemy sniper. He had told his mother:
I always carry four photos of you when we go into action. And I have kept the little medal of the blessed virgin. Your love for me, and my love for you, have made my whole life one of the happiest there has ever been. Brutus’ farewell to Cassius sounds in my heart: ‘If not farewell; and if we meet again, we shall smile.’ Now all my blessings go with you, and with all we love. God bless you, and give you peace.
‘He was loved by everyone,’ wrote one of his fellow officers, who had been censoring the men’s letters in the aftermath of Edward’s death. ‘Especially among the men; I think there could be no greater tribute paid than what they wrote home about him, praising him, quite a number asked their relatives to send them his photograph from the picture papers.’ One of them, Sydney Adams, wrote to his mother:
He wasn’t only an officer, he was a great friend to all the men … When things were at their worst, he would pass up and down the trench, cheering the men, and it was a treat to see his face always smiling. When danger was greatest his smile was loveliest. All were ready to go anywhere with him, although he was so young. All trusted him … Anything he could do make us happy he did.
They were heartbroken. These fleeting but strong relationships, struck up as men were huddled together in horrible circumstances and then severed by shell or by rifle, were put into words by Bim himself when a friend of his died at Neuve Chapelle in 1915.
It is the lot of some to keep a friend
Lifelong, and sharing with him young endeavour,
Take the last fence ’longside him at the end,
Well-tried companions, who no fate may sever,
And though for six short months I knew my friend,
My heart shall keep his memory forever.
Edward ‘Bim’ Tennant was laid to rest in the same row as his cousin Raymond Asquith at Guillemont Road Cemetery, plot I.B.18.