Osbert Sitwell’s Military Career

Writing of Osbert Sitwell in his book Facades: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell (London, 1989 edn), John Pearson states that by training and profession he was a regular soldier, and that his active service career ended when, after some months on the Western Front, he contracted blood-poisoning from an injured foot, and was sent home. Sitwell's personal file in the army records, now in The National Archives at Kew, tells a different story. Sitwell was commissioned in Dec 1912 not in the Regular Army but in the Special Reserve, which required him to undergo six months of training and thereafter three or four weeks with his regiment every year for six years.