With thanks to Dr Connie Ruzich whose post reminded me I had not yet researched Clifford
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| Clifford photo taken by Lady Ottoline Morrell |
Educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Exeter College, Oxford University, Clifford followed his father into the legal profession and went on to join the Inns of Court Officers Training Corps (OTC). He was commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment 8th July 1916 as a 2nd Lieutenant and served on the Western Front. His final rank was Lieutenant. On 22nd April 1917, Clifford was admitted to Catterick Military Hospital
Clifford’s younger brother John Frderick Raymond Kitchin, who was born in 1898, was killed in WW1.
“The Devon and Exeter Gazette”, Monday, June 24, 1918: “SEAPLANE TRADEDY – A verdict of “Death from misadventure” was returned at an inquest at a South Coast town on Saturday on Lt. John Frederick R. Kitchin, and Second Lieut. George Cole, pilot and observer of a seaplane, who were killed the previous day. The evidence showed that the machine had difficulty in rising from the water owing to rough sea. It struck a pier, burst into flames, overturned, and fell into the sea. Medical opinion was that, although the bodies were severely burned, death was probably caused by drowning.”
After the war Clifford wrote books and also bred and raced greyhounds. On the 1939 Census he is recorded as living at Chiddinghurst, Chiddingly, Chalvington, Hailsham R.D., Sussex and described himself as a novelist.
Clifford’s WW1 poetry collections were:
"Curtains". Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1919. (poetry)
"Winged Victory". Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1920. (poetry)
Catherine W. Reilly.- "English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography" (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1978) pp. 2 and 191
Here are some of Clifford's poems:
THE BATTLEFIELDS REVISITED
I. "THE HAPPY WARRIOR/'
" IF I survive, I shall return again
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| Battlefield visit |
To Merville, Arras, Albert, Neuve-Chapelle,
The towns of my companions who fell
As petals of a rose beneath the rain.
Yea, though the blood of friends be shed in vain,
I that now pass the inmost gate of Hell
Shall rise, and sing at last invincible
The song of thanksgiving among the slain."-
The prayer is answered. After many days
He comes once more to tread the ancient ways
Where poppies deck old wounds with scarves of red,
Till seeing three frail crosses on a mound
He kneels awhile to kiss the tortured ground,
Wishing he too were sleeping with the dead.
II. ARRAS.
ROOFS flung aside like curtains, twisted beams
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| Arras in WW1 |
Stretching their blackened fingers to the sky,
Thin solitary gables looming high,
Fold, in the void, vague penitential dreams.
Before the moon, the cold cathedral gleams
A white-limbed giant, glad to sanctify
The new-built houses, whose foundations lie
As islands washed with melancholy streams.
The exiles have returned, and in the shade
Of narrow streets, an endless cavalcade,
Wanders with expectation to and fro,
Till at the sudden music of a band
They dance among the ruins hand in hand,
And war becomes a tale told long ago.
III. VIMY.
HERE have the emblems of calamity
Fringed with a tasselled flame the grey-black air,
While swollen eye-lids blinded with despair
Wept for the grave's reluctant mystery.
Here was the wine of life poured sombrely
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| WW1 Trench with yellow flowers |
Upon the soil of plains remote and bare,
Till Time the Mage with ceremonial care
Delivered offspring of the agony.
Amid the tangled wire the rose is born,
And no-man's-land with locks of golden corn
Quivers forgetful of the darkened hours.
While with a wistful smile the reaper sees
Gliding along a line of broken trees
The crumbling trench ablaze with yellow flowers.
pp. 55 - 57 "Winged Victory"
https://archive.org/details/wingedvictory00kitciala/page/n3/mode/2up
Sources: Find my Past, Free BMD and
Dr. Connie Ruzich @wherrypilgrim via Twitter on 21st August 2022
The documentary film "The Somme" opened in 34 cinemas in London on Aug 21, 1916. In its first months, an estimated 20 million people view the film. Shortly after the end of the war, Clifford Henry Benn Kitchen (1895 - 1967) wrote a haunting 5-line poem about the film:
https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-somme-film.html
