With thanks to Greg Oakes for contacting me via the weblog, suggesting I add Kim Beattie to my list of WW1 poets, and to Steve Glover and Greg Oakes for sending me additional biographical details about Kim. If anyone has a photo of Kim please get in touch.
Kim was born Walter Kimberley Beattie on 2nd March 1900 in Ponsonby. His parents were Peter Beattie and his wife, Mary Jane, nee Swanston. Kim grew up in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He was named Kim because when he was born the Canadians and British had just taken Kimberley in the Boer War. Kim ran away to Toronto as a child.
During the First World War, Kim enlisted in the 48th Highlanders and served as an officer in the 15th Battalion. His WW1 poetry collection was entitled “And You”. He served again in the Second World War.
Kim Beattie wrote about his WW1 experiences: “Where the barrage had pounded, the trenches were literally smashed out of existence, garrisons were wiped out and countless Huns were buried under the flails of the guns. The Germans met were staggering and dazed.”
Kim dramatically described a seminal moment in Canadian history that for many soon symbolised a coming of age: “And so, as the word sang forth on the wires of the world that ‘the Canadians have taken Vimy Ridge’, men of the battalion were thrilling to their deed as seldom, if ever, they did on a day of victory. The average soldier takes such things as all in the day’s work and leaves the outward evidence of the elation of war to his war correspondents.”
"After Vimy"
 |
| "Vimy Memorial" c. 1930 by William Longstaff |
In flashes melt my dull-day comforts;
I drift a-dream down flaming ways;
I see the loom of nature's ramparts
In Vimy's red-embroidered haze!
At Neuville Ste. Vaaste (reliefs there mustered)
Are files of men, dim, weaving by
The grim cross-road, where shrapnel flustered,
In spiteful gusts from a snarling sky!
Where the Nine Elms once defied the ages,
But to crash and die in war-alarms,
There, the thunders drum as combat rages
And I glory in a Might of Arms!
I cringe in rush of salvo passings --
Rumbled threat of grim enterprise;
I pause till distant, rolling crashings,
Leap and throb and the echo dies.
From Arras reverberates a thresher,
Horizons foaming, oranging red;
The winds of dawn are blowing fresher,
As Woods of Farbus loom ahead;
There, blotted Thelus smokes, an ember
In the swathe of ruin wars enjoy;
And bursts afar the baleful temper
Of a losing stand before Fresnoy!
The night's pent strain is loosed below me,
The black is streaked with livid stain,
The stand-to panic floods wide slowly
As hints of sun cross Douai plain.
From lofty rim are mists swift bolting
The Ridge of Vimy falls off, sheer;
Shadows surprise with strange, new cloaking,
And a valley spire is glinting near.
A last rocket wavers, wan and hollow,
As, lost above, comes a swelling drone --
The impotent "Archie's" white puffs follow
A belated bomber, homing lone!
The scoring sun with clean rays beating,
Fills fields forlorn with augury,
And with staunch hearts, in foe's defeating,
Can see, at last, last victory!
Then from the rear drifts driver bawling --
A batter labours, changing ground!
In frantic haste a plank road's crawling;
With toiling men the slopes abound.
A prying plane arcs, and zooms down, scouting,
And turns to flee like a startled fawn!
Malevolent jaws, once more, are shouting;
Exultantly the assault goes on!
From “And You!” (MacMillian, Toronto: 1929). Pages 56-57.
https://peregrineacland.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/after-vimy-from-kim-beatties-and-you/
Captain William Frederick Longstaff (1879–1953) was an Australian painter and war artist best known for his works commemorating those who died in the First World War. The painting is from the Beaverbrook Collection of War Art in the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa.
"Star Shells"
 |
| "A Star Shell, 1916" C.W.R. Nevinson |
The star shells, like the souls of men,
Are gleaming through the gloom,
A lovely radiance shudd'ring up
Above a foul, grim tomb,
To hang in brooding brightness till
The fall brings black of doom.
The Watcher for the Judgment Day
In million drops of white;
A sparkling splendour in the sky,
A brilliant loop of light --
And murder's in yon rifle spurt
That stabs the aching night!
The slinking shadows stretch and race
A-down the writhing floors,
As up the jet walls of the night
The silver seeker soars,
And hovers, while the far guns roll
Like threat from Heaven's shores!
The peering sentries strain with eyes
That rim the sandbag tops;
The toiler stays his hand and stills
And quakes and all life stops,
Till back the shadows shrink and merge --
And blacker blackness drops!
--Kim Beattie
"A Star Shell, 1916" painted by artist Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889 – 1946) - the son of Henry Nevinson, the radical journalist, and Margaret Nevinson, an activist in the campaign for women's rights
From “And You!” (MacMillan, Toronto: 1929). Page 35.
https://peregrineacland.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/star-shells-from-kim-beatties-and-you/
https://www.keymilitary.com/article/canadas-first-stand
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/kimbeattie
https://peregrineacland.wordpress.com/tag/kim-beattie/
For additional information and poems about Kim Beattie
https://peregrineacland.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/after-vimy-from-kim-beatties-and-you/
Beattie, Kim. “48th Highlanders of Canada 1891-1928. “Toronto: 48th Highlanders of Canada, 1932.
https://qormuseum.org/tag/remembrance/
