Found by Stephen Cribari
Stephen contacted me recently with the following information:
The following is from Seldon & Walsh, "Public Schools and The Great War - a generation lost" at 126-127 (Pen & Sword Military, 2013):
Jack Girling took pride in being both an athlete and a scholar at Wellington College. He played rugby for the 1st XV, wrote poetry and won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford University. Jack was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the Hampshire Regiment and in 1916, at the age of 18, arrived on the Somme on the Western Front in France.
Jack took with him to France his rugby colours scarf and pinned it above his bed, as it reminded him of happier and more secure times. Its image prompted him to write a short poem, “School Colours”, while in his dugout near Lesboeufs, waiting to go over the top. It is easy to ridicule it as jejune and sentimental, but the truth of what he felt shines through the lines:
It hangs before me on a nail
For when I gaze on you above
I see dear Wellington again;
And in the mud and drifting rain
In fancy play the game I love.
(from “J. Girling, poems” published by his father for private circulation, quoted in P. Mileham, Wellington College, 2008, p. 75.)
Jack led his platoon over the top in an attack on 23rd October. Their mission was unclear and he was shot clean through the chest. His grieving father consoled himself by collecting his poems and publishing them for private circulation, writing in the preface that, 'His friends will pardon any immaturity for the sake of the boy that they knew and loved.'"
Original source: Information received from Stephen Cribari
Additional sources:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2230352/Pupils-enact-horror-Somme-tribute-pupils-killed-trenches-World-War-One.html
Somme-tribute-pupils-killed-trenches-World-War-One.html
https://viewer.joomag.com/wellington-college-yearbook-2010-2011/0480860001381163132/p6
If anyone has any definite information about Jack Girling and a photograph please get in touch.
