Page 135 - They Also Served

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Jeffery Amherst 1914.
Jeffery John Archer Amherst, Viscount
Holmesdale, was born in London on
13th December 1896. Educated at Eton,
he entered Sandhurst on one of the first
wartime courses and was commissioned
into the Coldstream Guards. After a
short spell of further training in the
UK, he joined his regiment in France,
travelling in a freight car marked ‘40
hommes, 8 Chevaux’. Wounded at the
Battle of Loos in September 1915, he
returned home to convalesce. There were
two hospital ships at Le Havre, one with Irish soldiers bound for Dublin, the other with British bound for Dover. Inevitably, the British soldiers ended up in Ireland.
After his recovery, Amherst returned to France in time to take part in the Battle of the Somme. Finishing the war as a captain with an MC and MiD, Amherst left the army in 1920. Soon afterwards, he met the legendary Noël Coward at a party, and the two became close friends. Coward described him as ‘gay and a trifle strained – with a certain quality of secrecy, as though he knew many things too closely’. The following year they travelled to New York, where Amherst worked on the city desk of a New York paper. His association with Coward opened show business doors, and the aristocratic Amherst became a regular guest at the lavishly decadent and hedonistic parties of the stars of the day, such as Tallulah Bankhead. Indeed, one of Bankhead’s friends once complained: ‘Every morning they run out of cocaine, and it’s me who gets sent out for more’. In 1927 his prestige was further enhanced when he became 5th Earl Amherst.
Growing bored of the USA, Coward persuaded Amherst to accompany him on a tour of the Far East, together with their 27 pieces of baggage. The trip inspired much of Coward’s best work and, in Hong Kong, laid low with flu, Coward had the idea for Private Lives. At Shanghai, they fell in with three naval officers from HMS Suffolk and sailed with the ship, during which time Coward committed his most famous play to paper. Later, while travelling by car from Hanoi to Saigon, with Amherst throwing in suggestions, Coward wrote Mad Dogs and Englishmen. On the boat home, they
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