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 9th Royal Scots Regiment of the Lothic Brigade. He was posted to France in 1915 and was
killed on 8th 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 and two are included in an anthology of Public School War Poetry called "A Deep Cry" published in 1993.
Two of Walter's brothers were killed in WW1 and another died while at school.
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
“Lines Written in a Fire Trench” above 'Glencorse Wood', Westhoek, 11th April, 1915
Tis midnight, and above the hollow trench
Seen through a gaunt wood’s battle-blasted trunk
And the stark rafters of a shattered grange,
The quiet sky hangs huge and thick with stars.
And through the vast gloom, murdering its peace,
Guns bellow and their shells rush, swishing ere
They burst in death and thunder, or they fling
Wild jangling spirals round the screaming air.
Bullets whine by, and Maxims drub like drums,
And through the heaped confusion of all sounds
One great gun drives its single vibrant “Broum”.
And scarce five score of paces from the walls
Of piled sand-bags and barb-toothed nets of wire
(So near and yet what thousand leagues away)
The unseen foe both adds and listens to
The selfsame discord, eyed by the same stars.
Deep darkness hides the desolated land,
Save where a sudden flare sails up and bursts
In whitest glare above the wilderness,
And for one instant lights with lurid pallor
The tense, packed faces in the black redoubt.
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
