wrote to his wife on 5th November of their encounter: I found the dear old fellow at last after a days search, looking very well, a bronzed and tattered soldier with incredible hands, all rough and overgroivn with cuticle - his eyes 1 thought less shy, very blue and bri ght, thin in the face but not worn or str ained, voice rather tired, but giving out the same wit and humour as of old. He was very happy and although I listened with hor ror and wonder to all he had seen and felt, he seemed to have been only tremendously interested, enjoying the hundreds of humor ous things that happened. He confessed the sight of wounded and dying men unnerved him, . *
He said he was quite well now and not tired.* '
According to John Nash, his brother Paul had no con ception of the realities of being an ordinary soldier; John was later highly amused by Paul’s account of their meeting above.
Autumn gave way to winter and conditions became stead ily worse. On the 30 . December, immediately after the Battle of Cambrai, the 1st Battalion Artists Rifles went over the top. The circumstances of the attack were partic ularly arduous for Nash’s company. The battalion had had a long spell in the front line holding the Salient at Marcoing in bitterly cold conditions with snow on the ground. On the night of 29 • December, they were relieved and went to the rear in support. At daybreak the following day, they were ordered to stand to, since the Germans had broken thr ough during the night and they were to be put into the line to recover lost positions. The Journey from the rear to the front line was a long and difficult one since they were hampered by the frozen corpses of men which littered the
1. Paul Nash, op.cit., 1947, pp.208-209.
trenches as a result of the previous night's bombardment• The delay this caused meant that the company had no time to recover from the gourney and it was sent into the attack immediately on arrival at the front line. The men were cut dorm by machine gun barrage which was no more than thirty yards distant from their position, Nash's company suffered very heavy casualties; at the end of the day, of eighty of ficers and men only twelve remained unharmed. Hash's experiences during this attack were the basis for what is perhaps his most important war painting, Over the Top, oil
(Plate 30).
Meanwhile Paul Nash had been working on his brother's behalf, trying to secure for John a position similar to his own• Paul Nash wrote to Sir Edward Marsh late in 1917 ask ing for help:
Can you by any fair or foul means help to get Jack home for a commission . • . It is unnec essary to speak of Jack's worth and his real value as an English artist and its a damned shame if nothing can be done to extricate him from a position where he is in the utmost danger {*)
John Nash decided to act on his own behalf however, and vjrote to the Ministry of Information from the front line requesting to be considered for a position as an official war artist. In the letter Nash stresses the importance of first hand experience:
• . • artists have been sent out here who have never been in the line before, and to my mind men who have been through months
1*. For a full account of the affair see The Artists Rifle Gazette, 21 January, 1935,
2, Letter dated 8 January, 1918, Quoted in Heft ram, op, cit., page 95.
in these extraordinary surroundings are more intimate with them and capable of good work.'-*-'
This first hand experience perhaps provides an explan ation for the consistently high quality of the work which Nash was subsequently to produce. It is interesting to note that in his letter Nash was sufficiently confident of the approval of Brown and Tonks as well as William Rothen- stein to cite them in support of his application, Nash re ceived a reply from the Department of Information informing him that they were at that time 'very crowded but (that) an opportunity may occur later
Paul Nash continued to work on his brother's behalf as a letter from Campbell Eodgson to Masterman of the Department of Information testifies:
I am assured by his (John Nash's) brother that he is deeply impressed by all that he has seen and most anxious to give expression to it in a way that would be useful for propaganda purp oses, To be frank I have doubts cibout the wis dom of employing two members of the same family and two artists who belong to the same (?) art istic group, though the elder brother assures us that the younger has quite a different out look from his own and can be triisted to use his material in a quite different way,(3)
One may suppose that the reference to propaganda purp oses was included by'Paul Nash as an incentive to adopt his
1, Letter dated January, 1918. Trustees of the Imperial War Museum London. Since Nash returned to England in the middle of January, this is probably the only letter he wrote from the front to the Department of Informa tion on the subject of his becoming a war artist.
2, Letter dated 5 : January, 1918. Trustees of the Imper ial War Museum, London.
3, Undated letter. Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London.
brother as a war artist since it is difficult to see what justification he would have had for making such an asser tion.
By the end of 1917 John Nash had been on continuous active service for over a year and in the middle of January 1918 he returned to Lngland on leave. Just ?,fter his ret urn Nash was promoted to the rank of sergeant. According to a letter from the l/ar Office to James Baird of the Dep artment of Information Nash received a telegram from them on 24 January, extending his leave indefinitely and ask ing him to wire his regimental number and where he was on leave from. Since, for some reason, the 'Jar Office receiv ed no reply to their telegram they were unable to inform Nash's regiment of his extended leave and consequently he was posted as a d e s e r t e r . W h i l e on holiday with his future wife, Christine, in the Chiltern Hills in April he was later told that the Military Police were searching for him in Manchester. He was in constant danger of being ar rested during this period which made his occasional visits to London rather hazardous.
This equivocal and even dangerous position was not normalised until late March or early April. The delay oc curred, one supposes, because Nash set something of a pre cedent. As a letter from the Ministry of Information to the War Office indicates it was assumed (erroneously as it turned out) that he would wish to return to the Western Front in his official capacity as a xvar artist in order to gather more information for his pictures* The Ministry of Information felt that it would be impossible for him to do this as an N.C.O. since he would not be afforded the off icer privileges that they felt were necessary for him to
1. Letter dated 26M March. 1918. Trustees of the Imper