By a strange chance, I was the first person to see him in khaki and shall never forget the occasion. It happened in the way - I had arrived at a small London hotel late one night in the Spring of 1915, and on entering the coffee room early the following morning, was surprised and delighted to come across "Opp" breakfasting alone. He told me he had been staying at the hotel six weeks, drilling hard the while in the "Inns of Court" O.T.C., by way of qualifying for the commission he hoped to obtain, as he put it, "any day now."

After a delightful half-hour recalling happy memories of the Alps and wondering when such places as Ferpecle - of blessed memory - would see us again we parted, he to his drilling, I to the great Courts on the other side of the Temple.

Circumstances unexpectedly detained me another night and next morning I was down early in the hope of another tête-à-tête with "Opp." But the only occupant of the coffee room was a soldier in privates uniform. Imagine my astonishment to discover that this"common soldier" was none other than dear old "Opp," whose only son I knew held a Commission.

To the obvious enquiry what he was doing in private's uniform, he told me he had got tired of waiting for a Commission, and had the previous evening made up his mind to enlist right away and take his chance of earning it.

"But" said I " What about your age, you are forty-six if you are a day?"

"That may be so this morning" he replied, "but I was only thirty-six last night at the recruiting station."

I question if the war has produced a more striking example of self-sacrifice. Think of it ye reluctant single men! A devoted wife and family, an exacting business, well-earned relaxation - not to mention the immunity of age - all voluntarily surrendered at the call of his country.

The same courageous spirit which he tells us brought him on the mountains "fearlessly to close quarters with death," led him as fearlessly to make "the great sacrifice" when the call came.

This was no ordinary patriotism, but whole-hearted single-minded devotion to his country.

Oppenheimer was a shy man, but there was a great charm behind this reserve to those who were privileged enough to penetrate it. He was constantly revealing fresh thoughts and ideas, and these came out gradually but continuously, so that one could not form a just estimate of him without a fairly long acquaintance. It is true to say that the longer his friends knew him, the greater became their affection for him. All lovers of the mountains were regarded by him as friends.

This was especially true with regard to his climbing and walking companions. He had a deep reverence for the mountains and fells, whose influence powerfully affected him. In turn, his companions experienced this feeling, which association with him made more intense. Thus a double communion was felt, the one with inanimate nature, and the other with one of her most ardent lovers. To be on the fells with Oppenheimer was a real joy.

...

Oppenheimer's nature endeared him to his men and to his brother officers in the Army. There, as in his climbing, and also in his every day civil life, he shewed the same thought and care for others and acted in the same brave, fearless, unselfish and unassuming way.

The Commanding Officer of his battalion wrote to his wife in such sincere terms of affection and with such a deep appreciation of personal loss in his death, that his letter will form one of Mrs. Oppenheimer's most treasured memorials of her husband.

No man could possibly earn or deserve a nobler tribute, however great or however brave he might be.

Mr. W. P. Haskett Smith, amongst the many other appreciations of Oppenheimer, expressed the universal estimate of his qualities. He wrote: "In the whole of my climbing circle, and it is a wide one, there is no one who will be more missed or who inspired a more widespread affection than your late husband. It was not so much his intense enjoyment of the hills, or his patience, dexterity and endurance, as his unfailing good temper and unselfish thoughtfulness for others, joined to his keen appreciation of the more poetic aspects of nature that endeared him to his companions... I shall always feel proud of having had such a man as my friend."

There are many who will echo these words.

Let me face the question without shirking. Why did I not enlist? I was too old to be accepted. Paltry excuse! Many, with pardonable falsehood, took ten or even twenty years from their lives in their eagerness to serve, and were accepted gladly. Is not physical fitness the underlying meaning of the age limit? Why, I was still good for 40 miles a day - probably 60 at a pinch. My son is up to the average of his fellow officers and and well above that of his men, and I could easily have beaten him at any sort of physical endurance. No I was not too old to fight and I never thought it.

Was I afraid perhaps coming back to a business crippled in my absence? That seems more probable. Strange that I should never have feared death, and yet dreaded curtailed means. Contemptible!

And how many things urged me on: the wish to follow my son's example; the desire to wipe out the ignominy of inheriting a German name; the disgust at doing such unessential work, day after day, as designing mosaics for churches - fiddling while Rome was burning.

Now I tried to persuade myself that it was necessary to stick at work for the sake of my family, for the sake of my employees, for the sake of the silver bullets, which, some one said, were going to win the war at the end. But I knew right well that these were mere excuses.

Then the thought of my "castle-in-the-air" - the retirement from business to a life full of all the energies I delighted in, amongst the surroundings of my beloved Lakeland - perhaps that also weighed in the balance. Yet what would that life have been, accompanied by the constant thought of duty neglected - possibly with a dead or wounded son whom I had not helped

In 1914 we were on a climbing/sketching holiday on the Isle of Arran (off the coast of Scotland) when the war started. We were in the unenviable position of possessing the German name of Oppenheimer and without our passports, we had difficulty in leaving the island. When we returned home, we found that the mosaic factory had been stoned and windows smashed, as the headboard read "Oppenheimer Mosaics".

...

In the meantime, my father who was very patriotic, was longing to fight and serve his country. Unfortunately his age was against him as were the non-violent principles of his Quaker wife. She eventually told him that he must follow his conscience as she herself was working as quartermaster in a military hospital. He was in a quandary, torn between his love of country and his duty to his family, quite aside from the fact that, at forty-six, he was eleven years older than the permitted age for enlisting.

...

My father joined the Artists Rifles, a battalion in the London Regiment. His fellow men were chiefly authors, artists and lawyers, and a think his time of training of Salisbury Plain was happy. Soon they were all forced to take commissions and my father became 2nd Lieutenant in the 23rd London's.

To my great joy, he wrote to me asking whether I would like to spend a week with him before they were sent abroad. I was seventeen and still at school, but with my mother's and headmistress' approval, I set off for Warminster. My father met me and took me to his Colonel's house where I lodged. This was situated near the camp and I would join my father in his free hours. ... He told me he did not believe in any future life, but said that he felt any influence we had on other humans was all that survived. He said that the likelihood was that we would never meet again and I think in this way tried to prepare me for his possible death.

...

One night in November 1916, a telegram arrived saying that my father was dangerously ill. I begged my mother to take me with her, so we boarded the next train to London and went straight to the War Office where we were given a permit to cross the Channel that night to Boulogne.

On arrival, we found the quayside filled with the wounded and dying. Thousands upon thousands of men were lying on the ground, some on stretchers, others half sprawled across their fellows. Some were dead and piled on top of each other as there was no room to lay them out separately. Groans and screams filled the air and the smell was unbearable.

We made our way to the Cristol Military Hospital where the matron had to search through long lists before she found my father's name. The hospitals were almost as bad as the quays - men lay side by side on trestle tables, some dying and a few already dead. We found my father sitting up and gasping for breath. He had been on Vimy Ridge where the Germans had used poison gas. A complete Canadian battalion had been wiped out, and in all, 10,000 men had died on that one day.

My father lived for a week, unable to lie down and slowly choking to death. My mother and I took it in turns to sit with him. He asked me to try and find out what had happened to his batman who had bee put in the same ambulance. I had hgis name and number, and at the third hospital I visited, a nurse scanned the list of the dead and found his name.

A cable arrived the following day from Uncle Louis (Ludwig), my father's brother, asking for his permission to sell the Mosaic Works. My mother tried to explain its contents, but my father was too exhausted to make a decision and indicated that Louis must decide what was best. This was the answer that was sent off from the cable office.

When my father died, his body was taken to the huge burial ground on the hillside above Boulogne where the sentinel played the Last Post.

In retrospect I realise I was selfish in my feelings. I was grief-stricken and thought that as I had loved him so much, no-one else could suffer as greatly. My mother must also have suffered, and I paid little attention.

...

I knew that nothing would ever be the same to me again and that this was the end of my childhood.

My parents met as students in the Manchester School of Art. She specialised in sculpture, and they both won prizes as outstanding students. Edith's father, Richard Newton, was an intellectual, but a poor businessman. He had four daughters: Edith (my mother), Eleanor, Constance and Grace, in such quick succession that his wife died giving birth to the fifth. His business failed and he became bankrupt and still managed to run a large house and carriage and pair by remarrying an heiress. Evidently, he neglected to mention the existence of his daughters until after the wedding. The marriage was not successful, and the four girls resented having a stepmother. They did their best to make her life miserable and a few years after their half-brother Richard and half-sister Ella were born, the marriage split up.

It was during this difficult period at home that my father managed to persuade Edith to marry him. I have always felt that whereas she greatly admired him, she did not love him and was also sexually frigid, a condition which could not have been helped by her Quaker upbringing.

On Lehmann's return from a year's study in Florence which he had won in the form of a scholarship, Edith agreed to marry him and they settled down in a house in Marple, a village near Manchester.

Their two fathers were not on speaking terms as Ludwig Oppenheimer despised Richard Newton as inefficient at business and a bankrupt, and Richard Newton disapproved of his daughter's marriage to a son of a German Jew.