With thanks to Lizbet Tobin for telling me about Theodore.
At some stage of his life, Theodore went to Canada because in 1904 he married Dora Simcox Lea, of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Theodore enlisted in the Canadian Veterinary Corps 3rd April 1915, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and served on the Western Front. Theodore was Mentioned in Dispatches for gallant and distinguished service in the field. While awaiting repatriation after the end of the conflict, Theodore died on 1st March 1919 of broncho-pneumonia at No. 48 Casualty Clearning Station. He was buried in Belgrade Cemetery, Namur, Belgium - Grave Reference: II. A. 15.
His WW1 poetry collection was “The Salient and Other Poems” by Theodore Augustus Girling, Second Edition, (Cecil Palmer & Hayward, London November 1918) and he also had poems published in the magazine “Canada in Khaki”.
“Canada in Khaki” was a magazine published in Toronto by the Musson Book Company and by the Canadian War Records Office to illustrate Canadians' actions during World War I and raise money for the Canadian War Memorial Fund. “Canada in Khaki” was published between 1917–1919 in three volumes. The magazine had a subheading “A Tribute to the Officers and Men now serving in the Overseas Military Forces of Canada”. A collection of war art reproductions, cartoons, poems, military history and personal recollections, it featured illustrations by contemporary artists, such as John Byam Liston Shaw, Harold H. Piffard and others.
“THE SALIENT” by Theodore Augustus Girling
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| "The Cloth Hall Ypres" by Walter Westley Russell |
They come from Southern victories
Another tryst to keep.
They march along the well-known road
Where often through the night they trode
From Poperinghe to Ypres.
Down by the grim Asylum
And past the famed Cloth Hall,
Old ruins now, more battered still,
Chateau, cathedral, hall and mill,
All tottering to their fall.
Out past their old entrenchments
To posts just lately won,
And in the night they take their stand,
In concrete fort and shell-hole land,
Against the cowering Hun.
They march not in as strangers,
But those who bear the brief
To shed fresh glory on their sign,
Borne bravely in the fighting-line,
Canada’s maple leaf.
The purpose of their coming
The graves of those shall speak
Who bore the first dread gas attack
And hurled the pressing foeman back
Or died at Zillebeke.
In Ypres’ famous salient
They claim the right to share,
Whose most heroic deeds were done,
Most hardly wrested triumphs won,
Most losses suffered here.
And on the ridges forward
Canadian signals fly,
And in the lower land between,
Advancing through the fiery screen,
Canadian heroes die.
Yet forward, dauntless pressing,
The final goal assail,
And claim for Britain’s Western sons
One more great victory ’mid the guns —
The heights of Passchendaele.
Pp 47 – 48 “The Salient and Other Poems” by Theodore Augustus Girling, Second Edition, (Cecil Palmer & Hayward, London November 1918). The collection is available to read on line:https://archive.org/details/N030734
“The Cloth Hall, Ypres” painted by Walter Westley Russell (1867–1949) is in the National Army Museum. During the First World War, Russell served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers and was Mentioned in Dispatches.
