Walter Scott Stuart Lyon (1886 – 1915) - Poet

Walter was born on 1st October 1886, one of five sons born to Walter Fitzgerald K. Lyon and his wife Isabella R. Lyon, nee Haddeth.   The family lived at Tantallon Lodge, North Berwick.

After attending Haileybury School in Great Amwell, Ware, Hertfordshire, Walter obtained his BA in Classics from Oxford and went to Edinburgh University where he studied law from 1909 till 1912.  He had joined the cadet corps in 1902 while at Oxford and became a Lieutenant in February 1913.   By 1914, Walter was a Staff Captain and he joined the 9^th Royal Scots Regiment of the Lothic Brigade.  He was posted to France in 1915 and was killed on 8^th May 1915 at Ypres.  He was 28 years old and was, according to Alastair Shepherd, the first Scottish Advocate to be killed during the First World War.   

Walter is commemorated as “One of the War Poets” on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres, on Panel 11.

Walter’s WW1 poetry collection “Easter at Ypres, 1915, and other poems” was published by Maclehose, Glasgow in 1916.

Two of Walter's brothers were killed in WW1 and another died while at school.

With thanks to Yvon Davis for spotting Alastair Shepherd’s research in “The Scotsman” into Scottish Advocates of the First World War http://www.scotsman.com/news/first-scottish-advocate-to-die-in-great-war-revealed-as-poet-who-wrote-in-trenches-1-4196214

Sources: Page 206 of Catherine W. Reilly “English Poets of the First World War A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978), Find my Past, Free BMD, The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website and Stephen Glenn's website http://stephensliberaljournal.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/death-of-war-poet-walter-lyon-8-may-1915.html