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”.
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| Father Purdie from Chris Warren's book |
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.
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| 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
