John Hay Maitland HARDYMAN, DSO, MC, FZS (1894 – 1918) - British

J

John was born in Bath on 28th September 1894.  He was the eldest son of Dr. George H. Perrymead Hardyman, a medical practitioner, and his wife Eglantine Henrietta Keith, nee Maitland, who were both originally from Scotland.   John’s siblings were: Constance Christian Beatrice Beath, b. 1893, Malcolm, b. 1896, Myrtle Rothes Eglantine, b. 1899, Harry Frederick Ralph, b. 1900 and George Hugh Murray, b. 1903.

Educated at Hamilton House School in Bath, then Fettes College, Edinburgh University in Edinburgh, John joined Prince Albert’s (The Somerset Light Infantry) Regiment on 19th August 1914.   He joined the Royal Flying Corps as a pupil pilot at Brooklands in December 1914, but after two accidents in the air, he re-joined his Regiment in January 1915 and was promoted to the rank of Second Lieutenant on 23rd February 1915.  

On 19th November 1916, John was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant and on 12th April 1917 to the rank of Major.  On 13th April 1917, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, thus becoming the youngest Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army at that time.  He was twice Mentioned in Despatches by Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig.

John was killed on 24th August 1918 and was buried in Bienvillers Military Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France, Grave Reference: XIX.F.11.

"From a Base Hospital in France" by John Hay Maitland Hardyman

Christ I am blind! God give me strength to bear

That which I most have dreaded all my days:

The palsied shuffling grasping air,

The moving prison five foot square

The haunting step that isn’t there –

These pictures dance before my sightless gaze …

Sources:  “Poetry of the First World War” edited by Marcus Clapham  Pp 85 and 167

Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St, Martin’s Press, New York, 1978); De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour, 1914 – 1919, Find my Past

Photograph from https://opusculum.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/lieutenant-colonel-john-hay-maitland-hardyman-somerset-light-infantry/

John’s First World War poetry collection, “A Challenge”, originally published by Allen & Unwin, London in 1919, is available to read as a free download: http://www.archive.org/stream/challenge00hard#page/n11/mode/2up

In the Foreword we read: 

"... a world out of which the standard he aimed at and the goal he was like seem to have vanished amid the chaos of dissolution on the one hand, and the madness of ill-conceived avarice on the other."

Page 6 of "A Challenger by Maitland Hardyman, Foreword by Norman Hugh Romanes, page 6. (Published by George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., London, 1919).

Frank Stuart Flint (1885 – 1960) – British poet

Frank Stuart Flint was born on 19th December 1885 in Barnsbury, Islington, North London, UK.  His parents were William T. Flint and his wife Harriett A Flint. Frank left school when he was 13 and began work.  

On the 1901 Census Frank is listed as being “a lad in a belt warehouse’.  In 1904, he began his long and distinguished career in the Civil Service, and in 1908 he published a book about French poets.  By 1910, his intensive private study had gained him recognition as one of Britain's most highly informed authorities on modern French poetry. His first collection of poems was “In the Net of the Stars”  published in 1909.

F.S. Flint is mostly known for his participation in the "School of Images" with Ezra Pound and T. E. Hulme in 1909, about which he gave an account in the "Poetry Review" in 1909, and which was to serve as the theoretical basis for the later Imagist movement (1913). His subsequent association with Ezra Pound and T. E. Hulme, together with his deepening knowledge of innovative French poetic techniques, radically affected his own poetry's development.

Although F.S. Flint did not serve in the First World War, he did write a poem about soldiers in the war - see below. After the war he became a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Labour. As a poet and translator he was a prominent member of the Imagist group. Ford Madox Ford called him "one of the greatest men and one of the beautiful spirits of the country".

With the exception of some short works arising from his activities as a civil servant, Frank ceased writing for publication in the early 1930s.

“ Lament”

The young men of the world

Are condemned to death.

They have been called up to die

For the crime of their fathers.

The young men of the world,

The growing, the ripening fruit,

Have been torn from their branches,

While the memory of the blossom

Is sweet in women's hearts;

They have been cast for a cruel purpose

Into the mashing-press and furnace.

The young men of the world

Look into each other's eyes,

And read there the same words:

Not yet! Not yet!

But soon perhaps, and perhaps certain.

The young men of the world

No longer possess the road:

The road possesses them.

They no longer inherit the earth:

The earth inherits them.

They are no longer the masters of fire:

Fire is their master;

They serve him, he destroys them.

They no longer rule the waters:

The genius of the seas

Has invented a new monster,

And they fly from its teeth.

They no longer breathe freely:

The genius of the air

Has contrived a new terror

That rends them into pieces.

The young men of the world

Are encompassed with death

He is all about them

In a circle of fore and bayonets.

Weep, weep, o women,

And old men break your hearts.

“In the Net of the Stars” , BiblioBazaar (Jun 2009) ISBN 978-1-110-85842-2

Cadences, Poetry Bookshop. London, 1915

Sources: “Poetry of the First World War” edited by Marcus Clapham Pp. 58 and 265.

Wikipedia, Find my Past.

Poem and photograph from https://allpoetry.com/poem/8585373-Lament-by-F-S-Flint