Edwin Campion Vaughan
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Edwin Stephen Campion Vaughan MC (30 November 1897–1931) was a British Army officer in the First World War whose diary later became a well-known book.
He was born at Forest Gate of a large Roman Catholic family and educated at the Jesuit College of St. Ignatius, Stamford Hill. In 1915, he joined the Artists' Rifles Officers' Training Corps and was trained at Hare Hall camp, Gidea Park, Essex, at the same time as the poets Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas, but there is no record of them having ever met. Vaughan was then commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment on 19 June 1916 as a Junior Lieutenant and sailed for France in January 1917. A fellow officer named Syd Pepper, who had seen action on the Somme in 1916, had convinced Vaughan to sign up for the 1/8th Warwicks, and he just managed to get in since there was one vacancy left. (January 8 journal entry)
During the Battle of Passchendaele (also known as the Third Battle of Ypres) in August and September 1917 he kept a diary of his experiences with trench warfare. He was temporary Captain of his Company for a very short time ( a few hours) while his commanding officer was wounded, until a new Company commander came up to the line. Vaughan was promoted to permanent rank of Captain in October 1917 and he later fought in the Italian campaign. In 1918 he returned to France where as a result of his heroics in capturing the a bridge over the Sambre Canal, Vaughan was awarded the Military Cross for bravery.
After the war, he tried to settle down in a civilian life, without much success. In 1920 he transferred to a Territorial Army battalion of the Essex Regiment. In 1922 he was commissioned into the Royal Air Force, qualifying as a pilot. He achieved the rank of Flight Lieutenant in 1928, but was retired due to ill health. He died in hospital in 1931, tragically the victim of a doctor's error in the administration of drugs, accidentally given cocaine instead of Procaine (Novocaine). He left a widow and four children.
After E. C. Vaughan’s death in 1931, one of his brothers hid the diary away in a cupboard, which is where it was found four decades later. The diary was published in 1981. Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2006, James J. Cramer cites "Some Desperate Glory" as one of the five best books on war: “Vaughan describes the screams of the wounded who had sought refuge in the freshly gouged holes only to find themselves slowly drowning as rain fell and the water level rose. A relentlessly stark account of the war's bloodiest, most futile battle.”
Vaughan ended his diary on August 28th, reflecting on the futility of Ypres with: " So this was the end of 'D' Company. Feeling sick and lonely, I returned to my tent to write out my casualty report; but instead I sat on the floor and drank whisky after whisky as I gazed into a black and empty future."[1]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Some Desperate Glory. The Diary of A Young Officer, 1917 © C.E.C. Vaughan and J.P.M. Vaughan 1981
[edit] References
- Vaughan, Edwin Campion (1917). Some Desperate Glory. The Diary of A Young Officer, 1917 © C.E.C. Vaughan and J.P.M. Vaughan 1981. Frederick Warne (publishers) Ltd.. ISBN 0333387279.
