T.B. Clark ( ? - ? ) – WW1 poet

Found by Andrew Mackay who very kindly sent me a copy of T.B. Clark’s collection“Rhymes of Two Regiments: A Souvenir of the Trenches” (William Nicholson & Sons Ltd., London & Wakefield).

T.B. Clark served as a Rifleman with the King’s Royal Rifle Brigade in France and Salonika during the First World War.   I cannot find out anything about him, other than the fact that he was a very prolific poet.  He has a large entry listing his WW1 poems – most of which were printed as broadsides - in Catherine W. Reilly’s “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978), pp. 85 – 87.   If anyone can help find more about T.B. Clark, please get in touch

Here is one of T.B. Clark’s poems from his collection “Rhymes of two Regiments: A Souvenir of the Trenches” (William Nicholson & Sons, Ltd., London and Wakefield – 7th impression):

“The K.R.R.E.’s.” by Rifleman T.B. Clark, K.R.R.

(With apologies to Sergt. Burley and Corpl. Lovell.)

(Composed in the Trenches at Armentieres, July 1915.)

THIS is the K.R.R.E. Mob, never hard up for a job,

Working early, working late, never known to put on weight ;

In the trenches every day, you will hear the Sergeant say –

“Bandolier and Rifle quick, get a shovel and a pick.”

Every morning, very early, you’ll discover Sergeant Burley,

While your bit of bacon’s cooking, for a working party looking,

“Get a pick and get a shovel, go along with Corporal Lovell,

Go and pick, and spade, and delve, you will be relieved at twelve.”

When the Germans you have strated, go and do your three hours’ graft,

If you did not know before, you’re the K.R.R.E. Corps,

And you never joined to fight, but to work with all your might ;

With your breakfast still uneaten, you must work till you’re dead beaten,

For they do not stop for trifles in the K.R.R.E. Rifles. 

In an explanatory note included with a poem entitled “The Strafing Section”, the poet explains: “The word “strafe” is used in Tommy’s vocabulary to indicate any form of attack.”

Cap Badge of King's Royal
Rifle Corps

A bandolier is a shoulder belt with loops or pockets for cartridges.

Broadsides were single sheets of paper printed on one side only. They were chiefly textual rather than pictorial and were printed to be read unfolded and posted up in public places. At first they were used for the printing of royal proclamations and official notices. Uses of the word date from the 16th century. In size most broadsides ranged from approximately 13" x 16" ("foolscap" size) to over 5 feet in length. 

According to Reilly, part of the profit of the sale of T.B. Clark’s collection “Poems of a private: a souvenir o f France and Salonika” (William Nicholson & Sons, Ltd., London) was for St. Dunstan’s Hostel for Blinded Soldiers and Sailors (now Blind Veterans UK).  

St Dunstan’s charity was founded in 1915 by publisher and newspaper owner Sir Arthur Pearson. Sir Arthur - who was blind -  in order to help the large number of veterans who lost their sight during the First World War.

Originally called the Blinded Soldiers and Sailors Care Committee, the charity soon became known as St Dunstan’s, which was the name of the first headquarters in Regent’s Park, central London.

https://www.blindveterans.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are/our-history/

Peter Baum (1869 – 1916) – German poet and writer

With thanks to AC Benus* for his fantastic work and research, for finding this poet for us and for finding and translating the poem featured.        

Peter Baum was born in Elberfeld, Wuppertal, Germany, on 30th September 1869.  He volunteered at the beginning of the First World War and was killed on 5th June 1916 at the age of 46 in Keckau, near Riga in Latvia.

Peter Baum’s collection of "trench verses" was published posthumously. They have been made available in VERSENSPORN No. 15 for the first time in almost a hundred years.

Wir sitzen da mit wenig Haaren,

Als seien eben wir geboren,

Und Sind doch lange schon bei Jahren.

 Gesichte immer Sich enthüllen,

Als wären wir noch junge Füllen

Mit Zukunftsrauschen in den Ohren.

AC Benus has kindly translated the poem for us:

We sit here with thinning hair in truth,

As if a tribe of newborns in years,

Though we're one already long of tooth.

But our faces unbosom our roles,

As if we were a herd of young foals

With futurity rushing our ears.

from “Schützengrabenverse” (Verlag der Sturm (Tr. Trench Verses)  , Berlin, 1916)

Sources:

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2073822

https://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/ihd/content/pageview/1069606

AC Benus is the author of "The Thousandth Regiment: A Translation of and Commentary on Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele’s War Poems” by AC Benus (AC Benus, San Francisco, 2020). Along with Hans's story, the book includes original poems as well as translations into English.    ISBN: 978-1657220584 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583

Book details: ISBN: 978-1657220584

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1657220583

https://www.amazon.de/dp/1657220583

Cover photo: Mark Basarab

Ambrose Vickers (1875 - 1956) – poet and Blacksmith

With grateful thanks to Andrew Mackay for finding this poem for us and to Dave Cole via Twitter - who found me the information I needed enabling me to research Private Vickers.   Andrew Mackay also sent me information about “Little Kitchener”.

Ambrose Vickers was born on 12th January 1875 in Bunbury, Chechire, UK.  His parents were Samuel Vickers, a Journeyman bricklayer, and his wife, Mary Vickers, nee Large.  

By the time of the 1891 Census, Ambrose was apprenticed to a local Blacksmith.  The 1901 Census records him as boarding in Benedi Court Street, Bootle cum Linacre, West Derby, Lancashire, with his occupation being Coachsmith. He was still registered at the address in West Derby in 1911.

As far as I can ascertain, Ambrose was in the Army Service Corps during the First World War, serving as a driver.  A further message from Dave Cole via Twitter (@MrCheapSeats) confirms my discovery.

Ambrose survived the war and in 1921 was registered as living in Slack Road, Barnston, Barnston, Wirral, Cheshire, working as a Blacksmith for Liverpool Corporation Electric Tramways Building & Maintanence.

In 1939 he was registered as a retired Blacksmith living in Benedict Street, Bootle, Bootle C.B., Lancashire.

Ambrose died in Liverpool in 1956. 

Unfortunately I can’t find a photograph of Ambrose - if anyone has one please get in touch. The image above the poem on the postcard is of "Little Kitchener" - little Jennie Jackson from Lancashire.  Jennie was known as "Young Kitchener" for the work she did during the First World War, collecting money to fund parcels for the fighting men. Jennie's mother, Kate, dressed Jennie as young Kitchener and they collected enough money to buy a field ambulance too. WW1 poet Thomas Napoleon Smith wrote a poem about Jennie - https://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.com/2018/07/thomas-napoleon-smith-pen-name-tonosa.html

"The postcard shown above was written by Pte. A Vickers in appreciation of a parcel he had received from "Little Kitchener"

Private Ambrose Vickers was not a Burnley man, born in Bunbury in Cheshire, he was a Blacksmith by trade. At the start of the war he was almost 40 years old, and not eligible for front line service."

Bunbury is a village in Cheshire, UK, south of Tarporley and north west of Nantwich on the Shropshire Union Canal.

Sources: Find my Past, FreeBMD, and http://www.burnleyinthegreatwar.info/burnleypicturesandpostcards2.htm

Alain-Fournier - pen name of Henri-Alban Fournier (1886 – 1914) - French author, poet and soldier.

Born Henri-Alban Fournier on 3rd October 1886 in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher département in central France, Fournier’s father was a school teacher. 

He studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris, where he prepared for the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure, but without success. At the Lycée Lakanal, he met Jacques Rivière, and the two became close friends. 

Fournier went on to study at the merchant marine school in Brest. In 1909, Jacques Rivière married Fournier's younger sister Isabelle.

Abandoning his studies in 1907, from 1908 to 1909 Fournier did his military service. Around that time, he published some essays, poems and stories which were later collected and re-published under the title “Miracles”.  

In early 1914, Fournier started work on a second novel – “Colombe Blanchet” - but it remained unfinished when he joined the Army as a Lieutenant in August 1914.  Fournier was killed fighting near Vaux-lès-Palameix (Meuse) one month later, on 22nd September 1914. His body remained unidentified until 1991.

Alain-Fournier wrote the novel  “Le Grand Meaulnes”, published in 1913, which I read at school.   The book has been made into a film twice and is considered a classic of French literature. The story is partly based on his childhood unfolding in an atmosphere of mystical unreality beyond which the world of adulthood is perceived.

I remember when Alain-Fournier’s body was discovered and re-burried in the cemetery of Saint-Remy-la-Calonne, Meuse, Lorraine, France.

http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2019/03/alain-fournier-in-la-tranchee-de.html

You can read some of Fournier's poems here:

https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2014/02/poems-alain-fournier/

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) – American poet, novelist, essayist, and short story writer.

According to a very kind friend who proof read this post for me, he never used the name "Francis," but was known all his life as "Scott."

Born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald on 24th September 1896, into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States of America, Scott initially lived with his family in New York State. He went to Princeton University where he became friends with future literary critic Edmund Wilson. 

Scott dropped out of university in 1917 and enlisted in the United States Army, receiving a commission as a Second Lieutenant. 

While  in training and waiting for deployment to the Western Front, Scott was stationed in a training camp at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, under the command of Captain Dwight Eisenhower - future general of the Army and United States President. He didn’t like Eisenhower's authority and apparently disliked him intensely.

Hoping to have his work published, Scott wrote a 120,000-word manuscript entitled “The Romantic Egotist” completing it in three months. When he submitted the manuscript to Scribner's publishers however, they rejected it. The reviewer, Max Perkins, was impressed, praised his writing and encouraged Scott to resubmit it after revision.

In June 1918, Scott was garrisoned with the 45th and 67th Infantry Regiments at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. At a country club there, he met Zelda Sayre, a 17-year-old Southern belle and the grand-daughter of a wealthy Confederate senator, whose extended family owned the first White House of the Confederacy.

Before he wrote his first novel, Scott had hoped to publish a collection of his poems and may even have considered writing a novel in verse. For the rest of his life Scott wrote poetry, much of it humorous, which allowed him to indulge his love of rhyme.

After a long and industrious life, Scott died on 21st December 1940.

“WE LEAVE TO-NIGHT” by: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

We leave to-night . . .

Silent, we filled the still, deserted street,

A column of dim gray,

And ghosts rose startled at the muffled beat

Along the moonless way;

The shadowy shipyards echoed to the feet

That turned from night and day.

 

And so we linger on the windless decks,

See on the spectre shore

Shades of a thousand days, poor gray-ribbed wrecks . . .

Oh, shall we then deplore

Those futile years!

 

See how the sea is white!

The clouds have broken and the heavens burn

To hollow highways, paved with gravelled light

The churning of the waves about the stern

Rises to one voluminous nocturne,

…  We leave to-night.

"We Leave To-night" is reprinted from “This Side of Paradise” F. Scott Fitzgerald  (Scribners, New York,1920).

Sources:  BBC television’s Mastermind, Wikipedia and

https://www.poetry-archive.com/f/fitzgerald_f_scott.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/f-scott-fitzgerald-biography-4706514

Francis Brett Young (1884 – 1954) – writer, poet, playwright, composer, doctor and soldier

With thanks to Stanley Kaye (The Poppy Man)* for finding this poet for us and for sending

me the photograph he took of the Memorial to Francis in the British National Memorial Arboretum

Portrait - artist unknown

Francis Brett Young was born in Halesowen, Dudley, Worcestershire, UK.  His parents were Thomas Brett Young, a medical doctor, and his wife, Annie Elizabeth Young, nee Jackson, who were married in Leicester in 1883.  Francis’s mother was also from a medical family.

Initially educated at a private preparatory school in Sutton Coldfield, Francis went on to Epsom College, a school for the sons of doctors.  He then went to train as a doctor at the University of Birmingham.  While there, Francis met his future wife – Jessie Hankinson - who was training at Anstey College of Physical Education. 

Francis began his medical career on the steamship SS Kintuck, on a voyage to the Far East, before taking on a practice in Devonshire in 1907. Francis and Jessie were married in Axbridge, Somerset, UK in 1908. His wife was a singer and he accompanied her as well as setting poems to music for her.

During the First World War, Francis served in the East African Campaign in German East Africa in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a medical officer with the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment. He was invalided out in 1918 and no longer able to practise medicine.  Francis wrote about his WW1 experiences in his book entitled “Marching on Tanga” which was heavily censored before publication in 1917.  The book is available to read as a free download on Archive:

https://archive.org/stream/dli.ernet.16384/16384-Marching%20On%20Tanga_djvu.txt 

THE GIFT

Marching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plain

Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani River,

England came to me - me who had always ta'en

But never given before -- England, the giver,

In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver

On still evenings of summer, after rain,

By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver

When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain.

Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain,

And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awake

Shivering all night through till cold daybreak:

In that I count these sufferings my gain

And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fain

Suffer as many more for her sweet sake.

AFTER ACTION

All through that day of battle the broken sound

Of shattering Maxim fire made mad the wood;

So that the low trees shuddered where they stood,

And echoes bellowed in the bush around:

But when, at last the light of day was drowned,

That madness ceased.... Ah, God, but it was good!

There, in the reek of iodine and blood,

I flung me down upon the thorny ground.

So quiet was it, I might well have been lying

In a room I love, where the ivy cluster shakes

Its dew upon the lattice panes at even:

Where rusty ivory scatters from the dying

Jessamine blossom, and the musk-rose breaks

Her dusky bloom beneath a summer heaven.

From “Poems 1916 – 1918” by Francis Brett Young, (W. Collins Sons & Co, Ltd., London, 1919), which is available to read as a free download on Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40344/40344-h/40344-h.html

Francis Brett Young’s WW1 poetry collections were:

“Five Degrees South (and other poems)”,  (Martin Secker, 1917)

“The Island (poems)”, (Heinemann, London, 1944)

“Poems, 1916-1918” (Collins, 1919)

And he had poems published in nine WW1 Anthologies.

Sources:  FreeBMD, Find my Past, 

Catherine W. Reilly, “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) p. 345 

https://allpoetry.com/Francis-Brett-Young

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40344/40344-h/40344-h.html

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw221799/Francis-Brett-Young

https://www.thenma.org.uk/

Photo by Stanley Kaye

An arboretum (plural: arboreta) is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a wide variety of different species.  The British National Memorial Arboretum is situated in the centre of England on Croxall Road, Alrewas in Staffordshire. It is easy to reach and is close to all the Midlands motorways.

*Stanley Kaye (known as The Poppy Man because he encourages us to plant poppies in remembrance) has a Facebook Group -

* https://www.facebook.com/groups/rememberingworldwarone

The 4 Flowers of Remembrance:

Flowers of Remembrance - Forget me Not
Poppy, Daisy and Cornflower

The Cornflower (Bleuet) is the remembrance flower of France,

The Daisy (Madeliefje/Marguerite) of Belgium, 

The Red Flanders Poppy (Coquelicot) is universal but the idea of using the poppy as a symbol of remembrance comes from American Poet Moina Belle Michael’s vow always to wear a red poppy in remembrance+ and

The Forget-me-Not of Germany (Vergiss-mein-nicht) 

Peter Van den Broeck tells us that The Forget-me-not is also the WW1 remembrance flower of the Armenian genocide ..... and for Newfoundland.

+ https://femalewarpoets.blogspot.com/2019/08/moina-belle-michael-1869-1944-american.html

Albert Bertrand Purdie (1888 - 1976) – British writer, poet and Catholic Church Minister

With grateful thanks to Chris Warren* for contacting me to tell me about Albert Purdie and for sending me a copy of two marvellous WW1-related books he has published:  “In Flanders Now: The War Poems of Father Albert Purdie 1915 - 1918” and “Somewhere in France: Letters written from the Front 1914 – 1918 by Jack Turner, MC, Croix de Guerre”.

Father Purdie
from Chris Warren's book

Albert Bertrand Purdie was born in Kensington, London, UK in 1888, the birth being registered in December of that year.  His parents were Arthur Purdie, and his wife, Wilhelmina Purdie, nee Kowertz, who was German.  They were married in Marleybone, London in 1883.  

According to Chris Warren in the Introduction to his reprint of Purdie's poetry collection, Albert was educated at St. Edmund's College, Old Hall, Ware, Hertfordshire, UK and became a Catholic Church Minister. He was ordained in 1914.   

During the First World War, Father Albert volunteered to serve as a military chaplain. His service record states that Father Albert served as a 3rd Class Chaplain to the Army Chaplain Corps* - with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry on the Western Front.  Chris tells us in his introduction to the book of poems: “He went on to serve in Salonika and Constantinople and ended the war with an OBE for bravery.”  

*The Royal Army Chaplains Corps was established in Britain in 1796 in order to provide religious and pastoral support to soldiers belonging to the Church of England.  However, in 1836, following Catholic emancipation, the Department took on its first Roman Catholic clergy.

I wonder if Albert met Stanley Casson who also served in Salonika during WW1 and was also a poet?  Casson wrote a book about his experiences during the First World War, which include an extremely interesting account of his time in Salonika. “Steady Drummer” by Stanley Casson (G. Bell & Sons Ltd., London, 1935).

https://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.com/2014/10/lieutenant-colonel-stanley-casson-1889.html  

In 1929, Father Albert was appointed Headmaster of St. Edmund's College, Ware, Hertfordshire – one of England's oldest Catholic schools.   He died in Brighton, Sussex, UK on 30th May 1976. 

According to the entry for Purdie in Catherine Reilly’s book “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography”, Albert Perdie’s First World War collection of poems was entitled “Poems” and was published by Washbourne in 1918.

Chris Warren tells us that Albert served again during the Second World War, this time as Chaplain to an RAF camp in Bedfordshire. He retired to Goring-on-Sea, Sussex when he was sixty.

Extract from a letter home written in July 1915 by Chris’s Uncle Jack who was serving on the Western Front:  “… we dropped in to see Father Purdie at his billet. I like him much: he is one of the best-read men I have come across – also tallk, with a clean boyish face and gold-rimme glasses.  He is not more than 26: quotes Virgil, and is a personal friend of the Meynells and of the late Robert Hugh Benson.”  Jack Turner was an artist and he went on: “He talks of writing something for me to illustrate. I have already drawn him a lovely Spahi (frun Tunis) smiling at one of the girls I know here: she was amusing him for me.    He has also given me a jolly little “Garden of the Soul” (Lady Edmond Talbot’s gift to the Catholic soldiers) which is small but has all the offices in.”

Other books by Father Albert Bertrand Purdie

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-review/article/abs/latin-verse-inscriptions-albert-b-purdie-latin-verse-inscriptions-pp-203-london-christophers-1935-cloth-4s-6d/ECD8BD1053E2058808F8C5C4A5A16CD3

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Albert-B-Purdie/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AAlbert+B+Purdie

“Ploegsteert Wood” a poem by Albert B. Purdie

WHERE the wood catches the thrust

Of green slopes pricked with told,

And draws their gathered splendour

Into its bosom.  Where the fiery breath

Of summer suns is caught and silently

Rebuked to sweetness, where long avenues

Of whispering trees tell secrets to the birds

In England now:

Where love meets love

In some recess, where woodman’s axe

Has made a clearing, and the ground

Is woven flowers and moss – the trysting-place

Of all fair dreams of life,

In England now.

*     *     *     *     * 

Where the dood dips to the line

Of trenches grey in fading light,

And draws the gathered dead

Into its bosom. Where the fiery breath

Of angry war is slowly spent and stilled,

And nightingales sing songs of other days,

And poplars sigh old memories back again,

In Flanders now:

Where life meets Death,

And dwells with her, where soldier’s axe

Has made a clearing, and the ground

Is trampled flowers and moss – the trysting-place

Of all dark dreams of death,

In Flanders now.

Ploegstreert, May, 1915.  

From “In Flanders Now: The War Poems of Father Albert Purdie 1915 -  1918” – with an introduction about Father Purdie written by Chris Warren - edited and published by Chris Warren.

Ploegsteert Wood was a sector of the Western Front in Flanders during the First World War. Part of the Ypres Salient, “Plugstreet Wood” (as British troops called it) is located around the Belgian village of Ploegsteert, Wallonia.

After fierce fighting in late 1914 and early 1915, Ploegsteert Wood became a quiet sector where no major action took place. Units were sent here to recuperate and retrain after tough fighting elsewhere and before returning to take part in more active operations.  From January to May 1916, Winston Churchill served in the area as Commanding Officer (Lieutenant-Colonel) of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.

Ploegsteert Wood, WW1

There are numerous Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemeteries and memorials around the wood, including the Hyde Park Corner (Royal Berks) CWGC Cemetery and the Berks CWGC Cemetery Extension with the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing. The Ploegsteert Memorial commemorates more than 11,000 British and Empire servicemen who died during the First World War and have no known grave. It is one of several CWGC Memorials to the Missing along the Western Front. Those lost within the Ypres Salient without a known grave are commemorated at the Menin Gate and Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing, while the missing of New Zealand and Newfoundland are honoured on separate memorials.

Another poem about Ploegsteert Wood – entitled “Vilanelle” - was written by WW1 VAD and writer Vera Brittain’s fiancé – Roland Leighton - who was also a poet:   http://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.com/2023/08/roland-aubrey-leighton-1895-1915.html

Sources:  Find my Past, Free BMD, messages from Chris Warren and his books - “In Flanders Now: The War Poems of Father Albert Purdie 1915 -  1918” and “Somewhere in France: Letters written from the Front 1914 – 1918 by Jack Turner, MC, Croix de Guerre”:  

Catherine W. Reilly "English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography" (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1978) - page 259 

https://derbyshireterritorials.uk/tag/ploegsteert-wood/

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/royal-army-chaplains-department

Chris Warren’s wonderful books can be purchased by following these links:

https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/11285382-in-flanders-now

 

https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/9304624-somewhere-in-france

Roland Aubrey Leighton (1895 - 1915) – British soldier writer and poet

Roland Aubrey Leighton was born in Marylebone, London, UK in 1895 - the birth being registered in June of that year.  His parents were Robert Leighton, a writer of boys' adventure stories, and his wife, Marie Connor Leighton, nee Connor, also a writer, who were married in Maryletone in 1889.

Roland was educated at Uppingham School in Rutland, where he met Vera Brittain’s brother Edward Brittain. In 1913, Roland began courting Edward's sister, Vera and was awarded a scholarship to study at Merton College, Oxford University in 1914

Abandoning his studies, Roland volunteered for service in the Army when war broke out, joining the Worcestershire Regiment and was posted to the Western Front.  

Roland and Vera became engaged on his first leave in August 1915. Roland wrote Vera letters from the Front, about British society, the war, the purpose of scholarship and aesthetics, as well as their relationship. She kept his letters in her diaries and mentioned them in later writings. Within his correspondence Roland also sent a number of poems.

On 23rd December 1915 Roland died of wounds in the Casualty Clearing Station at Louvencourt, France, having been shot through the stomach by a sniper while inspecting wire in the trenches at Hébuterne. He was 20 years old.  He was buried in LOUVENCOURT MILITARY CEMETERY, France,  Grave Reference: Plot 1. Row B. Grave 20. 

Sue Robinson of the Group Wenches in Trenches visits Roland’s grave when she takes members of the Group to France.  https://www.wenchesintrenches.org/

Photograph of Roland's grave by
Sue Robinson 

'Villanelle' poem written by Roland Leighton to Vera Brittain 

This poem is from The First World War Poetry Digital Archive, University of Oxford; © McMaster University, Mills Memorial Library, The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections

Violets from Plug Street Wood,

WW1 silk postcard

Sweet, I send you oversea.

(It is strange they should be blue,

Blue, when his soaked blood was red,

For they grew around his head:

It is strange they should be blue.)

Think what they have meant to me - 

Life and hope and Love and You

(and you did not see them grow

Where his mangled body lay

Hiding horrors from the day;

Sweetest, it was better so.)

Violets from oversea,

To your dear, far, forgetting land

These I send in memory

Knowing you will understand.

Ploegsteert Wood was a sector of the Western Front in Flanders during the First World War. Part of the Ypres Salient, “Plugstreet Wood” (as British troops called it) is located around the Belgian village of Ploegsteert, Wallonia.  

After fierce fighting in late 1914 and early 1915, Ploegsteert Wood became a quiet sector where no major action took place. Units were sent here to recuperate and retrain after tough fighting elsewhere and before returning to take part in more active operations.  From January to May 1916, Winston Churchill served in the area as Commanding Officer (Lieutenant-Colonel) of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.

There are numerous Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemeteries and memorials around the Wood, including the Hyde Park Corner (Royal Berks) CWGC Cemetery and the Berks CWGC Cemetery Extension with the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing. The Ploegsteert Memorial commemorates more than 11,000 British and Empire servicemen who died during the First World War and have no known grave. It is one of several CWGC Memorials to the Missing along the Western Front. Those lost within the Ypres Salient without a known grave are commemorated at the Menin Gate and Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing, while the missing of New Zealand and Newfoundland are honoured on separate memorials.

Sources:  Find my Past, Free BMD

https://derbyshireterritorials.uk/tag/ploegsteert-wood/

R.A.L

Hédauville, poem by Roland Leighton to Vera Brittain

The sunshine on the long white road

That ribboned down the hill,

The velvet clematis that clung

Around your window-sill

Are waiting for you still.

Again the shadowed pool shall break

In dimples at your feet,

And when the thrush sings in your wood,

Unknowing you may meet

Another stranger, Sweet.

Passion flower (Passiflora) in bloom December
2015

And if he is not quite so old

As the boy you used to know,

And less proud, too, and worthier,

You may not let him go - 

(And daisies are truer than passion-flowers)

It will be better so.

For more information: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/leighton

Alec Waugh (1898-1981) – British poet and writer

Born on 9th May 1898, Alexander Raban Waugh (known as Alec) in Chelsea, London, United Kingdom, Alec’s parents were Arthur Waugh, an author and publisher’s reader, and his wife, Catherine Charlotte Waugh, nee Raban. Alec’s mother was a Great-granddaughter of Lord Cockburn.  Alec was the elder brother of Evelyn Waugh who became a writer.

Lord Cockburn (1779 – 1854) was a Scottish lawyer, judge and literary figure. He served as Solicitor General for Scotland between 1830 and 1834.

Alec was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset before going on to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. In 1914 Alec was awarded the English Verse Prize at Sherborne and one of his poems was accepted in August 1915 by the “Chronicle”.  Commissioned into the Dorset Regiment in May 1917, Alec served as a machine gunner on the Western Front. He was a Lieutenant when he was captured by the Germans near Arras in March 1918. Alec spent the remainder of the war in Prisoner-of-War (PoW) camps in Karlsruhe and Mainz.

Alec Waugh’s WW1 poetry collection was “Resentment: poems” (Grant Richards, London, 1918) and he had poems published in four WW1 Anthologies.

"Cannon Fodder" September 1917 By Alec Waugh

Is it seven days you've been lying there

Out in the cold,

Feeling the damp, chill circlet of flesh

Loosen its hold

On muscles and sinews and bones,

Feeling them slip

One from the other to hang, limp on the stones?

Seven days. The lice must be busy in your hair,

And by now the worms will have had their share

Of eyelid and lip.

Poor, lonely thing; is death really a sleep?

Or can you somewhere feel the vermin creep

Across your face

As you lie, rotting, uncared for in the unowned place,

That you fought so hard to keep

Blow after weakening blow.

Well. You've got what you wanted, that spot is yours

No one can take it from you now.

But at home by the fire, their faces aglow

With talking of you,

They'll be sitting, the folk that you loved,

And they will not know.

O Girl at the window combing your hair

Get back to your bed.

Your bright-limbed lover is lying out there

Dead.

O mother, sewing by candlelight,

Put away that stuff.

The clammy fingers of earth are about his neck.

He is warm enough.

Soon, like a snake in your honest home

The word will come.

And the light will suddenly go from it.

Day will be dumb. 

And the heart in each aching breast

Will be cold and numb.

O men, who had known his manhood and truth,

I had found him true.

O you, who had loved his laughter and youth,

I had loved it too.

O girl, who has lost the meaning of life,

I am lost as you.

And yet there is one worse thing,

For all the pain at the heart and the eye blurred and dim,

This you are spared,

You have not seen what death has made of him.

You have not seen the proud limbs mangled and

Broken,

The face of the lover sightless raw and red,

You have not seen the flock of vermin swarming

Over the newly dead.

Slowly he'll rot in the place where no man dare go,

Silently over the night the stench of his carcase will flow,

Proudly the worms will be banqueting...

This you can never know.

He will live in your dreams for ever as last you saw him.

Proud-eyed and clean, a man whom shame never knew,

Laughing, erect, with the strength of the wind in his manhood -

O broken-hearted mother, I envy you.

And here is another of Alec's WW1 poems:

From Albert to Bapaume

Lonely and bare and desolate,

Stretches of muddy filtered green,

A silence half articulate

Of all that those dumb eyes have seen.

A bettered trench, a tree with boughs

Smutted and black with smoke and fire,

A solitary ruined house,

A crumpled mass of rusty wire.

And scarlet by each ragged fen

Long scattered ranks of poppies lay,

As though the blood of the dead men

Had not been wholly washed away.

Alec Waugh’s book about his experience as a PoW is “The Prisoners of Mainz”, illustrated by British artist and fellow WW1 PoW R. T. Roussel (1883 – 1967). This is available on Gutenberg as an ebook https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/54203/pg54203-images.html

Sources, Find my Past, FreeBMD,

Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliogrphy” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) p. 331. 

https://allpoetry.com/From-Albert-to-Bapaume

https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/blog/poem/from-albert-to-bapaume/

https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/poets-and-poetry/alec-waugh/

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/people/cp35838/raphael-t-roussel

Photo of Alec Waugh in WW1 from  . 

https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en/noartistknown/alec-waugh/nomedium/asset/3757947

"Our Leading Lady" illustration by R.T. Roussel
from Alec's book about his PoW exerpeinces

R.T. Roussel (1883 – 1967) - British artist who designed and constructed dioramas. He was the son of Theodore Roussel, a French painter and etcher

Who wrote the poem entitled "My Bivouac" - with thanks to Historian Debbie Cameron for finding this

 

With thanks to Historian Debbie Cameron who sent me this information

and information about "My Bivouac" poem 

Debbie says: "A poem entitled “My Bivouac” was published in a local paper in Penrith, Cumbria, UK (formerly in Cumberland) in March 1917. The paper states that the author, Isaac Hodgson from Penrith, was a Gunner in the Border Regiment, who was wounded twice.

Isaac Hodgson (1887 - 1918) – Gunner in the Border Regimen

Parents George and Elizabeth Hodgson.  Sister Mary. On researching him, I discovered that Isaac went back to the trenches and sadly died almost a year to the day after the poem was published, on 27th August 1918. 

His sister, Mary, was his next of kin and dependant, who as such received 13/- (thirteen shillings) a week for a year after his death. The epigraph of his Commonwealth War Grave Commission headstone that Mary had provided read “We little thought, when home on leave, he said his last goodbye”

Tragically, Isaac was only 24 when he died.

However, on further research I discovered a mystery -  the same poem was sent to the same local paper in Penrith – but a year later! This time it was attributed to a G. Rushforth of the same regiment. 

I found this out because someone wrote into the paper pointing it out! 

I discovered the second version of the poem was by George Rushforth (sometimes called Rushfirth) who was awarded the Military Medal in 1918.  

As the editor of the paper said, we will never know which who the original poet was, although logically it might have been the man who sent it in first? "

Debbie Cameron, 22 July 2023 

George Rushforth, MM (sometimes called Rushfirth) ( - ) - Border Regiment

BUT    The Mystery Deepens

Following Debbie’s message to me, I researched the poem and discovered it was also attributed to others. The Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph: February 17th, 1917 -

Albert Carrinton ( - ) - 

Pte Albert Carrington, serving with the Cheshire Regiment, described himself as "an old Luton milkman" when he sent a poem home to 2 South Road, Luton.   About his dear old shanty bivouac in which he was living on the Western Front, Albert wrote:

"My Bivouac" 

It's only some rags and canvas

Nailed to a blooming tree

There ain't no name on the fanlight

'Cos there ain't no fanlight, see!

It's a shanty knocked up quickly

With wire and bits of string;

It ain't no Buckingham Palace

And I don't feel a king.

For my bed, an old torn oilsheet

One blanket to roll around.

Where the 'chats,' the ants, the beetles

Find a happy hunting ground.

It's a spring - no, not a mattress;

It's the mud on Flanders floor.

As for mud, we beats the Navy,

We Somme-timers get washed ashore.

 When the boys march past,oh, blimey!

'That takes it' you'll hear them say

But to me it's a dear old bivvy,

Where I write and sleep and pray.

There's holes in the roof from shrapnel

And in the sides as well.

Sometimes it's peace and quietude

More often it's perfect hell!

I love my dear old bivvy

For the things it does contain;

Photos fixed on the canvas

Of those I hope to meet again.

On the floor there's fag ends lying,

To waste them would be a sin;

Tomorrow I'll have to smoke them

With the end of a blooming pin.

 

Pte Carrington volunteered for Army service in August 1915 and, after being drafted to the Western Front, saw action at Arras, Bullecourt, Ypres, The Somme and Cambrai. He survived the war and was demobbed in December 1919 with the British War Medal and Victory Medal.

[Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph: February 17th, 1917]

http://www.worldwar1luton.com/blog-entry/ode-battlefield-bivouac

And a version attributed to Thomas Conway 

https://thepeoplespicture.com/thomas-conway/

Thomas Conway MM (    -    ) - Company Sergeant Major 21671, 6th Bn, York and Lancaster Regiment. Son of Mr and Mrs S Conway of Artisan Street Sheffield.

https://www.wartimememoriesproject.com/greatwar/allied/battalion.php?pid=4988

If anyone can help solve this mystery, please get in touch.

Thank you.  Lucy London, 31st July 2023. 

Wilhelm Runge (1894-1918) – German poet

 

With grateful thanks to Historian, Writer, Translator and Poet

AC Benus* for his help with this post, for his advice and his on-going support for this project

Born on 13th June 1894, Wilhelm grew up in Silesia.   He volunteered to serve in the German Army during the First World War and was sent to the Western Front.  Wilhelm was wounded in November 1914. 

Once recovered, Wilhelm returned to the Western Front and was killed on 22nd March 1918 fighting  at Arras in France.  

Wilhelm Runge’s collection of poetry was  “Das Denken träumt : Gedichte” (Tr. "The Dreaming Mind" : Poems), which was published in 1918 around the time of his death. 

Du bist ein reißender Strom

erwürgst alle Brücken

bist du nicht da

irrt meines Blutes Herde

hirtenlos

und nahst du

flieht es

ein geschlagen Heer

scheu senken meine Augen ihre Lanzen

Bin ein träumend Dorf

im Geheg der Sterne

deine Augen werfen Brand

in die Giebel

deiner Hände Siegespsalmen bet ich

in den wilden Tempeln

meines Munds

Sonne blühen deiner Stirne Alpen

nie lieg ich so selig

wie zu deiner Stimme Füßen

diesem uferlosen Mai

Translations by AC Benus:

You’re a torrent able to

strangle all my bridges

for when you’re gone

my blood-herds roam shepherdless

aimlessly

but at your

approach

my eyes lower their spears

and flee like a timid army in defeat

I’m a dreaming town

where the corral of stars

thrown from your eyes goes up to

the high gables

your hands pitch for me to pray psalms

through the untamed temple

of my mouth

The sun blooms on your forehead while the Alps

have never lain so bliss-filled

as I do at your voice’s feet

on this lovely day in May

Schrecken zäunt die spieligen Gedanken

Mondschein hätschelt seine wilde Nacht

zuckend blutet Welt vom Sims der Sterne

Seele hastet Herzen wimmre Wunden

wankend

tastet zager Sommertag

Translation:

Sheer terror bridles any playful thoughts 

the moonlight may cradle through its wild nights

while twitching bleeds upon a ledge of stars

and the soul teeters hastily as wounds

are rocked

to palpate bleak summer days

Seufzer bangt

des Auges voller Garten

steht in Regen

durch der Stirne Wüstensand

schleppt sich die Gedankenkarawane

sonnetaumelnd

durstentlang

alles Blut verdunkelt wolkenschwül

und der Hände scheue Tauben

ängsten

da springt auf der Seele wildes Tier

donnerheult

die Hölle seiner Schrecken

und zerstampft den Frieden in die Wildnis

die das Eiland seiner Stärke ist

Translation 

Sighing pops

in the full garden of eyes

erect in rain

upon desert sand ridges

hauling slow caravans of thought with them

getting sun-stroked

and thirsty

while along the way blood clouds darken

and the cowardly hands doves fear

worriedly

soon have wild beasts pouncing upon them

like thunder

be-howling the horrors of hell

which trample peace underfoot in the wilds

because it is their island of strength

From “Das Denken träumt : Gedichte” (Tr. "The Dreaming Mind: Poems"),

Additional source:

http://www.deutsche-liebeslyrik.de/runge_wilhelm.htm

* AC Benus is the author of a book about German WW1 poet Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele : “The Thousandth Regiment: A Translation of and Commentary on Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele’s War Poems” by AC Benus (AC Benus, San Francisco, 2020). Along with Hans's story, the book includes original poems as well as translations.    ISBN: 978-1657220584

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583

Richard Aldington (1892 – 1962) – British WW1 soldier poet

Richard was born on 8th July 1892 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK. Christened Edward Godfree Aldington, he was the eldest of four children. His parents were Albert Edward Aldington, a solicitor, and his wife Jessie May Aldington, nee Godfree. 

Both Richard’s parents wrote and published books and in their home was a large collection of European and classical literature. As well as reading, Richard's interests included butterfly-collecting, hiking, and learning languages – French, Italian, Latin and ancient Greek.

Educated at Mr Sweetman's Seminary for Young Gentlemen, St Margaret's Bay, near Dover, Kent, UK, and Dover College, Richard went on to study at the University of London. Unable to complete his degree because of the strained financial circumstances of his family, Richard began work as a sports journalist and started submitting his poetry to British magazines. He gravitated towards literary circles of the era, meeting fellow poets William Butler Yeats and Walter de la Mare.

In Kensington, London, UK in 1913, Richard married the American poet Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.). The marriage was registsered in December 1913.   Although the couple were later divorced they remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Between 1914 and 1916, Richard was Literary Editor and a columnist for the magazine “The Egoist”. “The Egoist” (subtitled An Individualist Review) was a London-based literary magazine founded by British Suffragette Dora Marsden as a successor to her feminist magazine “The New Freewoman”. The title and content was changed under the influence of American poet Ezra Pound into a literary magazine. Published from 1914 to 1919 “The Egoist” published important early modernist poetry and fiction.  

Richard, WW1

Richard joined the British Army in June 1916 and was sent for training to Wareham in Dorset.  He encouraged H.D. to return to America where she could make a safer and more stable home. 

Initially joining the 11th Leicestershire Regiment, Richard was posted to the Western Front in December 1916.  He wrote to H.D. telling her that he “managed to complete 12 poems and three essays since joining up and wanted to work on producing a new book, keeping his mind on literature, despite his work of digging graves”. He found the soldier's life degrading, living with lice, cold, mud and little sanitation. His encounters with gas on the front had a profound effect on him for the rest of his life. He was given leave in July 1917 and he and H.D. enjoyed a period of reunion. 

Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the Royal Sussex Regiment in November 1917, Richard was gassed but finished the war as a Signals Officer and temporary Captain and was demobilised in February 1919.

After the war, Richard became a literary critic and biographer.

“Bombardment”

Four days the earth was rent and torn

By bursting steel,

The houses fell about us;

Three nights we dared not sleep,

Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash

Which meant our death.

The fourth night every man,

Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion,

Slept, muttering and twitching,

While the shells crashed overhead.

The fifth day there came a hush;

We left our holes

And looked above the wreckage of the earth

To where the white clouds moved in silent lines

Across the untroubled blue.

Richard Aldington poem illustrated by Paul Nash (1889 - 1946)

found for us by Josie Holford

Richard Aldington’s WW1 poetry collections were: “Collected poems” (Covici Friede, New York, 1928; “The Eaten Heart” (Chapele-Reanvile, France, 1919) and“Images and other Poems” (The Egoist, 1919) and his poems were included in thirteen W1 poetry anthologies.

Richard died on 27th July 1962 in Sury-en-Vaux, Cher, France where he had lived from 1958

Richard Aldington is among the First World War poets listed on the memorial  Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. The inscription on the mmorial stone is a quotation from the work of a fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen. It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

Sources:  Find my Past, FreeBMD, Wikipedia and

Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Pres, New York, 1978)  pp. 38 – 39.

Otfried Krzyzanowski (1886 – 1918) – Austrian/German poet

Another WW1 poet found for us by AC Benus*

Born in Starnberg, Bavaria on 25th June 1886, Otfried Krzyzanowski’s parents were Heinrich Krzyzanowski (1855–1933), and his wife, Auguste née Tschuppik (1861–1909).  Otfried's father, Heinrich, was a childhood friend of Austrian composers Hans Rott and Gustav Mahler.

The family moved to Vienna in 1897 and in 1907 Otfried went to study philosophy at the University of Vienna.  

After the death of his mother in 1909, in 1910, Otfried left his studies and devoted himself to poetry and literature, living a free life, completely rejecting bourgeois customs and lifestyle. 

"I've written and studied poetry, but I know very well that it's not work. The truth is, I don't do anything and doing nothing is a great nuisance. How few can stand it!” (“Against the Idlers”, 1918, quoted from “Collected Works” , p. 59).

From 1912, Otfried had some of his poems published in magazines.

Otfried died of starvation in Vienna on 30th November1918, during the chaos that followed the end of the First World War. The official cause of death given by the Vienna General Hospital was "emaciation" and "debility".

Here are three of the WW1 poems from Otfried's collection "Unser täglich Gift: Gedichte"  - En. Tr. Our daily poison. poems. (Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig, 1918) 

"ÄSTHETIK DES KRIEGS"

Nur der erschaut die schönen Berge wirklich,

Der keine Zeit hat, sie zu bewundern.

Die Soldaten im Süden, nicht die Touristen sehn

Die Dolomiten am besten.

Denn die Natur, ob sie schön oder grausam sei:

Für unsre leere Zeit ist sie nicht gemacht.

Und wirklich sieht den Krieg nur einer, der irgendwie

Keine Zeit für ihn hat.

Der Soldat vielleicht, wenn er daheim

Bei seinem Weibe ruht.

"DER TRINKER AUF DEM SCHLACHTFELD"

Du! schläfst im fließenden Wein!

Du! rufst im Traum.

Hier, Tod, hat dein Spiel

Lichten freien Raum.

Resignation.

Du große Stille! Der Ruf nach Heldentum ist

Verzweiflung des Herzens. Und doch gibt es Männer.

Ihr leuchtenden Sterne! Der Ruf nach Schönheit ist nur

Verzweiflung der irren Sinne. Du große Stille!

“Ballade”

Ein geschändeter Leichnam

Erschlagen im Walde.

Seinen Feinden wehe zu tun

Hat keiner verstanden wie er.

Nacht war’s und einsam der Weg,

Da horcht er: Sie lauern ihm auf.

Narrheit ist Betteln, ist Angst,

Verlangt es die Wölfe nach Blut.

Tauch auf! Es enttauchte der Furcht

Seine Seele und lachte der Kälte.

Enttaucht! Wie lüsternen Grimms

Er nach seinem Dolche griff –

Ein geschändeter Leichnam

Erschlagen im Walde.

 AC Benus has very kindly translated these poems for us:

“War’s Aesthetic”

He with no time to admire them

Honestly sees the beauty of mountains.

The soldiers in the South, and not the blasted tourists,

Can view the Dolomites the best.

For Nature, whether it be cruel or beautiful,

Was not created for our empty hours.

Likewise, those with only time to reflect, see the war  

When they’ve no time for it.

The soldier, perhaps, who is at home

On leave with his sweetheart.

“The Drinker on the Fields of Slaughter”

You! Asleep in the flowing wine.

You! Scream in dreams.

There, Death, toys with you

In free and easy space.

It’s in resignation.

The powerful quiet. Heroism’s call is

The desperation of hearts. And yet men remain.

You light-emitting stars! The mere call of beauty is

Desperation to crazed senses. You powerful quiet.

“Ballad”

A mutilated human body

Struck dead in the woods.

Nobody understood like he

How to hurt his enemies.

t was night; the way, lonely,

Then he hears: they’re waiting for him.

Begging is foolish, just like angst,

For wolves crave only blood.

 Dive in! His soul bails for fear

And now laughs at the cold.

Bailed out! How with passionate fury

He grabbed for the dagger –

A mutilated human body

Struck dead in the woods.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/52183/pg52183-images.html

* AC Benus is the author of a book about German WW1 poet Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele : “The Thousandth Regiment: A Translation of and Commentary on Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele’s War Poems” by AC Benus (AC Benus, San Francisco, 2020). Along with Hans's story, the book includes original poems as well as translations.    ISBN: 978-1657220584 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583

John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir (1875 – 1940) – writer, poet, historian

I only recently realised that John Buchan - one of my favourite writers - had also written poetry and deserves to be remembered here

Joh Buchan, WW1

Born in Perth, Scotland on 26th August 1875, John’s parents were John Buchan, a Free Church of Scotland Minister, and his wife Helen. John junior was the eldest child and had three brothers - William, Walter and Alastair - and a sister, Anna. Anna Masterton Buchan (24 March 1877 – 24 November 1948) also became a writer and used the pen name O. Douglas.   

John grew up in Fife, attending schools in Kirkcaldy. Then in 1888, the family moved to Glasgow, where John’s father was called to serve at the John Knox Church in the Gorbals.  After attending Hutcheson's Boys Grammar School, John went on to study Classics at the University of Glasgow in 1892.. In 1895, John won a scholarship to study at Brasenose College, Oxford University, where he met and befriended Thomas Arthur Nelson, grandson of the founer of the Edinburgh publishers.   

John married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor in 1907 and the couple had four children.  

By the time the First World War began, John’s career continued to be pulled in two directions - the political and the literary. He worked for the publishers Nelsons, in Edinburgh. John fully understood the importance of positive propaganda to the war effort and, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, from 1915,  he worked as a war correspondent for “The Times” and “The Daily News” newspapers, sending optimistic reports from the Western Front in France.   He became Director of Information at the Foreign Office’s Department of Information (1917-1918) and, for a brief time, Director of Intelligence.  He continued to write novels and poetry – “Greenmantle” and “The Thirty-Nine Steps” were written at that time. 

Though more famous as a novelist than a poet, the war inspired John to write and publish "Poems, Scots and English" in 1917, a volume that included verse in Scots vernacular. 

“POEMS  SCOTS AND ENGLISH” BY JOHN BUCHAN ( Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., London, Edinburgh & New York 1917)  Dedication:

TO MY BROTHER ALASTAIR BUCHAN, LIEUTENANT, ROYAL SCOTS FUSILIERS WHO FELL AT ARRAS ON EASTER MONDAY 1917 

John’s brother, Alastair Ebenezer Buchan (b. 1895), a Lieutenant in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, was killed fighting in the First World War at the Battle of Arras on Easter Monday, 9th April 1917 – the same day and during the same Battle that John’s friend Thomas Arthur Nelson was killed. Alastair Buchan was buried in Duisans British Cemetery, Etrun, France, Grave Reference: I. N. 14.

John's Mother, Helen, visiting
the grave of Alastair Buchan in 
Duisans, France

“On Leave” pp. 55 – 58 

I HAD auchteen months o' the war, 

Steel and pouther and reek, 

Fitsore, weary and wauf, — 

Syne I got hame for a week. 

Daft -like I entered the toun, 

I scarcely kenned for my ain. 

I sleep! t twae days in my bed, 

The third I buried my wean. 

The wife sat greetin' at hame, 

While I wandered oot to the hill, 

My hert as cauld as a stane, 

But my heid gaun roond like a mill. 

I wasna the man I had been, — 

Juist a gangrel dozin' in fits ; — 

The pin had faun oot o' the warld, 

And I doddered amang the bits. 

I clamb to the Lammerlaw 

And sat me doun on the cairn ; — 

The best o' my freends were deid, 

And noo I had buried my bairn ; — 

The stink o' the gas in my nose, 

The colour o' bluid in my ee, 

And the biddin' o' Hell in my lug 

To curse my Maker and dee. 

But up in that gloamin' hour, 

On the heather and thymy sod, 

Wi' the sun gaun doun in the Wast 

I made my peace wi' God. . . . 

• • • • • 

I saw a thoosand hills, 

Green and gowd i' the licht, 

Roond and backit like sheep, 

Huddle into the nicht. 

But I kenned they werena hills, 

But the same as the mounds ye see 

Doun by the back o' the line 

Whaur they bury oor lads that dee. 

They were juist the same as at Loos 

Whaur we happit Andra and Dave.- 

There was naething in life but death, 

And a' the warld was a grave. 

A' the hills were graves. 

The graves o' the deid langsyne, 

And somewhere oot in the Wast 

Was the grummlin' battle-line. 

• • • • •

But up frae the howe o' the glen 

Came the waft o' the simmer een. 

The stink gaed oot o my nose, 

And I sniffed it, caller and clean. 

The smell o' the simmer hills. 

Thyme and hinny and heather, 

Jeniper, birk and fern. 

Rose in the lown June weather. 

It minded me o' auld days, 

When I wandered barefit there, 

GuddHn' troot in the burns, 

Howkin' the tod frae his lair. 

If a' the hills were graves 

There was peace for the folk aneath 

And peace for the folk abune. 

And life in the hert o' death. . . . 

• • • • • 

Up frae the howe o' the glen 

Cam the murmur o' wells that creep 

To swell the heids o' the burns. 

And the kindly voices o' sheep. 

And the cry o' a whaup on the wing, 

And a plover seekin' its bield. — 

And oot o' my crazy lugs 

Went the din o' the battlefield. 

I flang me doun on my knees 

And I prayed as my hert wad break. 

And I got my answer sune, 

For oot o' the nicht God spake. 

As a man that wauks frae a stound 

And kens but a single thocht, 

Oot o' the wind and the nicht 

I got the peace that I socht. 

Loos and the Lammerlaw, 

The battle was feucht in baith. 

Death was roond and abune, 

But Hfe in the hert o' death. 

A' the warld was a grave, 

But the grass on the graves was green, 

And the stanes were bields for hames, 

And the laddies played atween. 

KneeHn' aside the cairn 

On the heather and thymy sod, 

The place I had kenned as a bairn, 

I made my peace wi' God. 

1916

John Buchan died on 12th February, 1940.

https://archive.org/details/poemsscotsenglis00buch/page/54/mode/2up

According to Catherine W. Reilly, John Buchan’s WW1 poetry collection were:

“Meditations of a country chiel: a collection of verse” (Edinburgh, Bishop, 1918)

“Poems: Scots and English” (Jack, 1917)

“Poems: Scots and English” (new edition – Nelson, Edinburgh, 1936) 

He also had a poem or poems published in 2 WW1 anthologies:

“Northern Numbers: representative selections from certain living Scottish poets (Foulis, 1920)

William Robb, Comp. “A book of twentieth-century Scots verse. (Gowans & Gray, 1925).  All in Scots dialect. 

Sources:  Find my Past, FreeBMD, Wikipedia,

Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) pp. 22, 25 and 73

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26070692

https://archive.org/details/poemsscotsenglis00buch

https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/story/23343

https://www.peeblesshirenews.com/news/17199203.april-9-1917---day-will-forever-haunt-buchan-family/

https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/168887/alastair-ebenezer-buchan/

Willard A. Wattles (1888-1950) – poet and educator

 

Another WW1 poet found for us through the wonderful research of poet and writer AC Benus*

Born on 8th June 1888, in Baynesville, Kansas, USA, Willard’s parents were Harvey Austin Wattles, a farmer and lumber dealer, and his wife, Jennie Fay Wattles.

Willard studied at the University of Kansas, graduating in 1909.  He began teaching at a high school in Leavenworth, Texas, before returning to Kansas University for a further two years, completing a fellowship and Master’s degree in 1911.  He then taught English Literature at Leavenworth High School, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Kansas.

After completing his undergraduate studies at the University of Kansas in 1909, Willard began his teaching career as an English teacher at a high school in Leavenworth, Texas.  He returned to Kansas University for another two years, completing a fellowship and Master’s degree by 1911. Willard spent the next nine years in academia, instructing students in English at Leavenworth High School, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Kansas.  

After graduating from Princeton in 1921, Willard moved to Connecticut and then Oregon, where he continued to teach and pursue his love for poetry. Willard became widely recognized, not only for his teaching background, but also for several books and for his poems, some of which were published in “The Independent”. 

On 25th June 1925, Willard married Mary Brownlee (1889 – 1989).

Hamilton Holt, editor of “The Independent” and president of Rollins College, was so impressed by Willard's work that he requested Willard Wattles’ presence at Rollins.  In 1927, Willard joined the faculty, bringing the “qualities of heart and mind that made him greatly beloved by the students.”   

Willard Wattles died on 25th September 1950.  The Omnipotent Order of Osceola presented his widow, Mary Wattles, with a plaque, inscribed, “to our teacher and friend, Willard Austin Wattles…we walk together when we are apart, our eyes have met and what we saw, no man shall know, nor forget.”

During the First World War, it is likely that Willard served in some capacity – possibly teaching - in the US Army, because the Introduction he wrote to his volume “Lanterns in Gethsemane; a series of Biblical and mystical poems in regard to the Christ in the present crisis” (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1918) was dated “18th September 1918 at Camp Funston.” 

Willard Wattles died on 25th September 1950.  The Omnipotent Order of Osceola presented his widow, Mary Wattles with a plaque, inscribed, “to our teacher and friend, Willard Austin Wattles…we walk together when we are apart, our eyes have met and what we saw, no man shall know, nor forget.”

“To Robert Westman dead in battle”

I was his teacher on a time

Some happy seasons back,

Guiding his hand and mind to trace

That knowledge which youths lack.

Now dead in France, his tenderness

Enfolds me as the sea,

Now I am like a little child

In wonder at his knee.

“Bobbie I love you” is all my heart can say

No matter where I wake at night or wander in bright day.

No word of mine could every say

One half of what is true

No reticence is graver than

The poem that is you.

Willard Wattles. 

From the anthology "Men and Boys", Edited by Edward Mark Slocum (New York, 1924), p. 79.

Collections published by Willard Wattles:

The Funstan double track : and other verses (N. A. Crawford, 1919) 

The Funston double track (N. A. Crawford, 1919) 

Lanterns in Gethsemane; a series of Biblical and mystical poems in regard to the Christ in the present crisis (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1918) 

Sunflowers, a book of Kansas poems (A. C. McClurg & co., 1916) 

NOTES: Camp Funston is a U.S. Army training camp located on Fort Riley, southwest of Manhattan, Kansas. The camp was named in memory of Brigadier General Frederick Funston (1865–1917). It is one of sixteen such camps established in the USA at the outbreak of The First World War.

Construction beganat Camp Funston during the summer of 1917 and eventually encompassed approximately 1,400 buildings on 2,000 acres (8.1 km2). The Camp Funston Garrison was administered by the 164th Depot Brigade, commanders of which included George King Hunter.  Depot brigades were responsible for receiving, housing, equipping, and training enlistees and draftees, and for demobilizing them after the war.

Two divisions commanded by Major General Leonard Wood, totaling nearly 50,000 recruits, trained at Camp Funston. Notable units who received training at Camp Funston include the 89th Division, which was deployed to France in the spring of 1918, the 10th Division and black soldiers assigned to the 92nd Division.

During the First World War, Camp Funston also served as a detention camp for conscientious objectors (COs) many of whom were there due to religious convictions. 

In March 1918, some of the first recorded American cases of what came to be the worldwide influenza pandemic, also known as "Spanish flu", were reported at Camp Funston.

Photograph - Camp Funston WW1 - Soldiers Sending Civilian Clothes Back Home -- This picture postcard is one of the few items of evidence showing the presence of the American Express Company at military camps during the First World War. In this case, the soldiers are posing in front of the American Express building near the railway at Camp Funston, Kansas. They are sending their civilian clothes back home, after being issued with their uniforms.  Both American Express and the Railway Express companies provided services to the soldiers during WW1, along with the U.S. Post Office.

The Anthology "Men and Boys", Edited by Edward Mark Slocum (New York, 1924) 150 copies of the original book were printed privately. The reprint is: “Men and Boys: An Anthology [Timothy d'Arch Smith / Donald H. Mader, Commentators) (The Coltsfoot Press, New York 1978).

Sources: 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1657220583

http://swansongrp.com/wwi.html

https://omeka.wppl.librarymarket.com/exhibits/show/histbioref/mary-wattles

https://lib.rollins.edu/olin/oldsite/archives/golden/Wattles.htm

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Wattles%2C%20Willard%20Austin%2C%201888%2D1950

* AC BENUS

AC Benus is the author of a book about German WW1 poet Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele : “The Thousandth Regiment: A Translation of and Commentary on Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele’s War Poems” by AC Benus (AC Benus, San Francisco, 2020). Along with Hans's story, the book includes original poems as well as translations.    ISBN: 978-1657220584

To purchase a copy please see: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583