Sometime today, which was a Friday, Kittie received the following telegram:
O.H.M.S. I certify that this telegram is sent on the service of the WAR OFFICE [Signature]
2nd Lieut. Calderon Oxford Light Infantry attached K.O.S. Borderers was wounded June 4th. Further news will be telegraphed when received.
FROM: Secretary, War Office
We simply do not know her immediate reaction, but it seems unlikely that she panicked. At least the telegram said George had been wounded; and he had been wounded once before. She doubtless rang her closest friends in London. She may have dropped lines to Violet Pym, Catherine Lubbock, and her closest friend Nina Astley (Corbet), or even rung them, but she seems to have taken no action yet.
It was presumably now just a case of waiting for the ‘further news’ to be telegraphed as promised. On the other hand, when George had been wounded in Flanders on 29 October 1914, he telegraphed her himself (see my post of 1 November 2014).
Next entry: Letter from a concerned friend
