Literature of the Lost Generation. Richard Aldington his life and work. Death of a Hero. Plan: Introduction 3

1.2 First World War and aftermath
Aldington joined up in June 1916 and was sent for training at Wareham in Dorset. H.D. moved to be closer to her husband. He then was sent to a camp near Manchester. They found the duality of their lives harsh, and the gruelling, regimented nature of the training felt hard for the sensitive professional poet. He felt fundamentally different from the other men, more given to intellectual pursuits than unending physical labour that left him little time to write. Their sporadic meetings were emotionally wrenching and the couple could make no plans for their future together. He encouraged H.D. to return to America where she could make a safer and more stable home. They both watched news come in of heavy troop losses in France at the Somme and on other battlefields. She could not have information given on her husband's future postings overseas, all held to be secret. Rationing and the forced draft began as the war turned against the British.^[2]
When Aldington was sent to the front in December 1916, the couple's relationship became epistolary. He wrote that he'd managed to complete 12 poems and three essays since joining up and wanted to work on producing a new book, in order to keep his mind on literature, despite his work of digging graves. He found the soldier's life degrading, living with lice, cold, mud and little sanitation. His encounters with gas on the front would affect him for the rest of his life. He was given leave in July 1917 and the couple enjoyed a reunion during this brief reprieve. He felt distant from old Imagist friends like Pound who had not undergone the tortuous life of the soldiers on the front and could not imagine the living conditions.
Aldington joined up in the 11th Leicestershires and was later commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment (November 1917).^[18] He finished the war as a signals officer and temporary captain, being demobilised in February 1919.^[6] He may never have completely recovered from the war, writing of his own field experiences in the collections Images of War and Images of Desire (1919), which were suffused with a new melancholy. He ended the war feeling disconsolate about his own talent as a poet.^[4] Exile and Other Poems (1923) also dealt with the process of trauma. A collection of war stories Roads to Glory, appeared in 1930. After this point he became known as a critic and biographer.^[6]
Towards the end of the war H.D. lived with composer Cecil Gray, a friend of D. H. Lawrence's. They had a daughter together in March 1919, the pregnancy much complicated by H.D.'s catching pneumonia towards the end. Neither Gray nor Aldington wanted to accept paternity. By the time of Aldington's return H.D. was involved with the female writer Bryher. H.D. and Aldington formally separated and had relationships with other people, but they didn't divorce until 1938. They remained friends for the rest of their lives. He destroyed all the couple's pre-1918 correspondence.^[19]
Aldington helped T. S. Eliot by persuading Harriet Shaw Weaver to appoint Eliot as Aldington's successor at The Egoist magazine. In 1919 he introduced Eliot to the editor Bruce Richmond of The Times Literary Supplement.^[20][21] Aldington was on the editorial board of Chaman Lall's London literary quarterly Coterie (published 1919–1921), accompanied by Conrad Aiken, Eliot, Lewis and Aldous Huxley.^[22] Eliot had a job in the international department of Lloyds Bank and well-meaning friends wanted him full-time writing poetry. Ezra Pound, plotting a scheme to "get Eliot out of the bank", was supported by Lady Ottoline Morrell, Leonard Woolf and Harry Norton^[23] Aldington began publishing in journals such as the Imagist The Chapbook. In reply to Eliot's The Waste Land, Aldington wrote A Fool i' the Forest (1924).
Valentine Dobrée 1919
Aldington suffered a breakdown in 1925.^[24] His interest in poetry waned, and he developed an animosity towards Eliot's celebrity.^[25] Aldington grew closer to Eliot^[26] but gradually became a supporter of Vivienne Eliot in the troubled marriage. Aldington satirised her husband as "Jeremy Cibber" in Stepping Heavenward (1931).^[27] He had a relationship with writer Valentine Dobrée and a lengthy and passionate affair with Arabella Yorke, a lover since Mecklenburgh Square days, coming to an end when he went abroad.^[2][11][28]
Aldington helped Irene Rathbone publish her semi-autobiographical novel We That Were Young in 1932. They had an affair that ended in 1937. Rathbone dedicated her 1936 novel They Call it Peace to him, and she wrote a long poem, Was There a Summer?: A Narrative Poem, in 1943 about their relationship.^[29]