William Kersley Holmes - pen name ‘W. K. H.’ - (1882 - 1966) – WW1 soldier poet, writer and artist

With thanks to Dr Connie Ruzich for reminding me that I had not yet researched William 

 

William Kersley Holmes was born in Kings Norton, Worcestershire UK in 1882 – the birth being registered in the third quarter of the year – i.e. July/August/September.   His parents were William Charles Holmes, and his wife, Amy Eleanor Holmes, nee Kersley. William had the following siblings: Geoffrey M.K. Holmes, b. 1878, Robert K. Holmes, b. 1880, and Olive K. Holmes, b. 1881.   

The family moved to Scotland when William was little and went to live in Dollar, Clackmannshire.  Educated at Dollar Academy, William worked in a bank until the First World War began, when he joined the Lothian and Borders Horse Regiment as a Lance-Corporal. He saw action in France and Belgium, before being transferred to the Royal Field Artillery and promoted to the rank of Second  Lieutenant.  

He joined General Dunsterville's Dunsteforce Expedition to Russia in 1917.  Throughout the war, William kept a diary in which he sketched all aspects of army life. Descriptions of life in the trenches also appeared in his poetry.  Williams’s WW1 collections were:

“Ballads of Field and Billet” (Gardner, Paisley, 1915) – which was published in four editions - “More Ballads of Field and Billet, and other verses” (Gardner, Paisley, 1915),  “In the open: verses! (Gowans & Gray, 1925), and “The life I love: verses” (Blackie, 1958).  He also had poems published in four WW1 Poetry Anthologies.

After the war his writing led him into journalism and then publishing – he worked as editor for children’s books with Blackie & Son, creating much of the content of the Blackie’s boys’ and girls’ annuals and contributing many children’s stories to BBC radio. Hundreds of pieces of light verse signed ‘W. K. H.’ were published in Scottish magazines and newspapers, and in national publications such as “Punch”, and “Country Life”.  William’s hobby was hill-walking, which inspired “Tramping Scottish Hills”, published in 1947 and “On Scottish Hills”, published in 1962, both illustrated with photographs he took.

William died on 7th August 1966 in Alloa, Scotland after a brief illness and was buried in Dollar Churchyard.

“The Neutral” by William Kersley Holmes

A haze of dust floats up from marching feet

Along our homely roads;

Great waggons clatter down the sleepy street

With unfamiliar loads.

The little town, so quiet as it stirred

In languorous morning haze,

By ringing bugles, lately still unheard,

Now regulates its days.

In quiet meadows towns of tents arise,

Where peace was wont to brood;

The mutterings of world-wide war surprise

The heart of solitude.

War, like a restless fever, haunts the air,

Changing the world we knew;

The men we are forget the men we were

In all we think and do.

And yet, impartial, patient, as of yore,

Life wakes the hidden seed;

Of who will reap or who will reap no more

Wise nature takes no heed.

from “More ballads of field and billet, and other verses” (Paisley : Alexander Gardner, 1915)

Sources:  Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) pp. 1,4, 5,24 and 172;

Affleck Grey “The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui” (Birlin, Ltd. Edinburgh, 2012)

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y6e8BQAAQBAJ&pg=PT84&lpg=PT84&dq=william+kersley+holmes+writer&source=bl&ots=u3ygrHxQcJ&sig=ACfU3U0aPTN6CiT3Gxyc6udZA6YBdxAGPw&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiIhovmuJzxAhUMiFwKHQZ1CH4Q6AEwCXoECAYQAw#v=onepage&q=william%20kersley%20holmes%20writer&f=false

Find my Past, Free BMD  and

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/neutral/

For more information about William, and an appreciation of one of his poems, please see Dr. Connie Ruzich’s website Behind Their Lines https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2017/08/eating-chip-potatoes.html

Connie has also compiled a commemorative WW1 poetry anthology  -  “International Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology of Lost Voices” 

Book Review: “Welsh Poetry Music and Metres” by Howard Huws (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, Llanrwst, Wales, 2017)

As the title implies, this wonderful book explains the origins, history and intricacies of the various forms of Welsh poetry.   There is a chapter on Welsh poets of the First World War, as well as the Aftermath.   To my mind, Welsh poetry is a very important part of the poetic cultural heritage of the British Isles.

This book is fantastic – it is a must read for all poetry lovers.

For an example of the poetry form Cywydd please see the post about Dafydd Ellis of 2 June 2021 http://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.com/2021/06/dafydd-david-dai-ellis-1893-1918-welsh.html

Lucy London, June 2021

Sir Edward de Stein (E.D.S. E.De S.) The Trench Bard (1887 - 1965) – WW1 soldier poet and merchant banker

Edward Adolphe Sinauer de Stein was born in London, UK at 9 Palace Gate on 16th June 1887, the eldest of three children born to Clara Annie (d. 1927), daughter of Baron de Stein of Antwerp, and her husband, Sigmund Sinauer (d. 1911), a merchant, who adopted his wife's surname and was known as Sinauer de Stein. Educated at Eton and Magdalen College Oxford, Edward was commissioned into the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and served in France during the First World War.   He wrote several war-themes poems which were published in “The Times” newspaper and “Punch” and “The Bystander” magazines.  He was promoted to the rank of Major.

The elder of Edward's sisters married Herwald Ramsbotham, later first Viscount Soulbury, politician and governor-general of Ceylon. His younger sister kept house for him all their adult lives.   He was knighted in 1946.

Edward de Stein's WW1 poetry collection was entitled 

“The Poets in Picardy, and other poems (Murray, 1919) 92 pages.

His poems were published in ten WW1 poetry anthologies.

To a Skylark Behind Our Trenches

by Sir Edward De Stein

Thou little voice! Thou happy sprite,

How didst thou gain the air and light—

That sing'st so merrily?

How could such little wings

Give thee thy freedom from these dense

And fetid tombs—these burrows whence

We peer like frightened things?

In the free sky

Thou sail'st while here we crawl and creep

And fight and sleep

And die.

How canst thou sing while Nature lies

Bleeding and torn beneath thine eyes,

And the foul breath

Of rank decay hangs like a shroud

Over the fields the shell hath ploughed?

How canst thou sing, so gay and glad,

Whilst all the heavens are filled with death

And all the world is mad?

Yet sing! For at thy song

The tall trees stand up straight and strong

And stretch their twisted arms.

And smoke ascends from pleasant farms

And the shy flowers their odours give.

Once more the riven pastures smile,

And for a while

We live.

Edward de Stein, France, May, 1916.

Lindisfarne Castle was sold to Sir Edward de Stein. In 1944 he gave the castle to the National Trust and he remained its tenant until he died in 1965. His sister Gladys took over the tenancy until she died in 1968.

Sources:

Catherine W. Reilly "English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography" (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1978), p. 110. 

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/511866

http://www.ecastles.co.uk/lindisfarne.html

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Stein-4

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_treasury_of_war_poetry,_British_and_American_poems_of_the_world_war,_1914-1919/Poets_Militant

Harold Anthony Adelsberg (1884 – 1964) – British WW1 soldier poet and lithographer - Guest Post by Historian Debbie Cameron

 A post by Historian Debbie Cameron who has been very supportive of this project since it began in 2012.   Debbie has written and published numerous articles about the First World War and has a Facebook Group - Remembering British women In WW1 -The Home Front & Overseas

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/1468972083412699 

– where you will find further information about Nurse Phyllis Haviland and her autograph book

A poem written by a young soldier while he was wounded and recovering in  hospital in Chelsea, London, in a WW1 nurse's autograph book by Harold Anthony Adelsberg. 

Harold was born on 29/1/1884 in Liverpool, Lancashire, UK. He was one of 13 siblings (3 of whom died) born to Johannes Karl Adelsberg, a printer/compositor, and his wife, Jane, nee Hughes. Educated at Clint Road Council Schooll, Edge Hill, Harold followed his father into the lithography trade and on the 1901 Census was apprenticed to a Lithographer.  This was his occupation on the 1911 census and 1939. 

Harold enlisted on 22nd September 1914 and joined the King’s Liverpool Regiment as a Private.  He must have been injured in 1916, as that is the date on his poem. He was later transferred to the Labour Corps.  (I think due to being unfit for overseas service as he received the silver badge).  He married Mabel Cecilia Jeal in West Derby in October 1918. Harold died 1964.

Like his Father, Harold Adelsberg was a lithographer, so I wonder if that's why the poem he contributed to Phyllis Haviland’s authograph book is so beautifully presented. 

Sources:

The Autograph Book belonged to Phyllis Haviland, who worked as a nurse throughout the Great War. The images on the website are pages from her autograph book, in which she allowed wounded soldiers to draw sketches and write poetry. I believe she is the nurse photographed with her patients The  book contains sketches and poetry. While most of the content seems to relate to the time when she worked at St Marks Hospital in Chelsea, London, she may have moved to a hospital in St Albans later in the War. One or two of the later notes may have been made there.

http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa/document/8816/2861

http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa/document/8816/2861?fbclid=IwAR1cycP9o2LBh7AuMwMO34EOkDMhwhGzJ5v83l1sCYL1rjaFMdvOC-yqR5U

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Adelsberg-7

Dafydd (David) ‘Dai’ Ellis (1893 – 1918) – Welsh poet and WW1 medic

With thanks to Sheila and Jim Maxwell of the Harlech Old Library and Institute for telling me about Dafydd, and to Clive Hughes of the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum for information and for his wonderful translation of the poem, to Keith Edmonds and Robin Braysher of the Salonika Campaign Society and to Nick Lock and Al Pool of the RWF Museum for additional information about Dafydd.

Daftdd was born in 1893. His parents were Thomas and Elizabeth Ellis.  Dafydd was their second child of five children, and their eldest son.  He grew up on Penyfed, the family farm, which his father leased as a tenant farmer from Colonel Mainwaring, on whose estate it was situated.

In 1913, Dafydd graduated from the University College of North Wales with a BA Hons in Welsh.  While at university, he met Albert Evans, who became famous as the Welsh poet whose Bardic name was Cynan and who later became the Archdruid of Wales.  They became friends and joined the Welsh Student Company of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) together. Posted  to Salonika, they were separated for the first time in four years and served in different units.

Private David Ellis 81871

Enlisted RAMC 11.12.1915

Mobilised 29.1.1916

Embarked for Salonika 10.9.1916

Posted to 36 General Hospital 29.9.1916

Missing on or since 15.6.1918.

By all accounts, Dafydd was a prolific writer. For instance, we are told that he wrote an elegy to David Jones, nicknamed 'Dei Llwyn Cwbl', son of Robert and Margaret Jones of Llwyn Cwbl farm, Llangwm, Uwchaled.  Jones, who was a talented harpist, was killed serving in WW1 with 1st Battalion, the Welsh Guards (Private, no. 2101) in France.  He died of his wounds on 7th January 1917. Dafydd Ellis wrote:    

“Brwd alaw ei bêr delyn - ddistawodd ys tywyll ei fwthyn. Hyd erwau gloes - drwy y glyn Aeth o ymdaith a'i emyn.” 

Rough translation: 

The fervent song of his sweet harp is silent; 

his cottage is in darkness; 

through the aching acres - through the valley he went, 

leaving his sojourn and his hymn.

On 15th June 1918, Dafydd disappeared from a British Forces camp a few miles north of Salonica.  His body was never recovered but he is remembered on the Addenda Panel of the Doiran Memorial in Salonika, Greece. Dafydd Ellis e is also remembered on the WW1 Remembrance plaque in Soar Congregational Chapel in  Glyndwr, Maerdy, Clwyd, Wales.

In 1946, Dafydd's friend Cynan published a piece of ‘romantic fiction’ about his friend’s disappearance.  Entitled "Y Ffarwel Weledig”, it was a veiled attempt to outline Ellis’s possible escape to a life amongst the local people - the Vlachs - as told to Cynan in a letter from a fictitious Welsh soldier serving in Macedonia during the Second World War.

Article from "Mosquite", the Magazine of
the Salonika Campaign Society, 1954

Clive Hughes of the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum tells us “ There’s a biography of him by Alan Llwyd and Elwyn Edwards – “Y Bardd A Gollwyd:  Cofiant David Ellis”  (164 pp) (Cyhoeddiadau Barddas, 1992).  It's in Welsh, but interestingly doesn't refer to him by any other than the English forename.

Here is one of Dafydd Ellis's poems in Welsh:

Cywydd Gyrru’r Eryr i Gymru

(yn ôl Dafydd ap Gwilym)

A threm a lledrith yr ha’

Hyd anial Macedonia,

A’r fagnel ar dawelu

Ar y bryn ei rhaib a’i rhu,

Eryr uchel a welem,

Rhugl ei dro, gloyw o drem,

Ac iddo fo yn y fan

Roi chwithig annerch weithian.

...........

Yn llawen gyda lliwiau

Drud y wawr, ehed eryr

Draw ymhell hyd erwau myr.

Gad oror losg y dwyrain

Gad y rhos ar frig y drain;

Hwnt i olwg Italia

A golud rhwysg Gwlad yr Ha’;

Anwyldeb y Canoldir

A’r tes yn goreuro’r tir. 

Yna trwy .........

Anialdiroedd, ffriddoedd Ffrainc,

Lle nad oes llwyni dail

Na dedwydd hyfryd adail,

Na thirioniaeth rhianedd

Ond cur y byd---eco’r bedd.

.............

Ar ei hyd; taria wedyn

Ar lawr glas Parlwr y Glyn.

Yno mae hoen ‘y mywyd,

Ac yno mae, gwyn y myd,

Ardal hyfryd Rhyd Lefrith,

A’r dydd ar y bronnydd brith.

Dafydd Ellis

(o’i lyfryn yn Salonica)

Poem sent to me by Sheila and Jim Maxwell of Harlech Old Library and Institute, Wales

Here is a wonderful translation of the poem kindly done for us by Clive Hughes from Bangor, Gwynedd - I can visualise Dafydd seeing the eagle and wanting to send it soaring through the sky over to his home in Wales from Macedonia across the war zones

“The Cywydd* of Sending the Eagle to Wales” (A Cywydd is a Welsh poetry form see below)

(after Welsh Medieval poet Dafydd ab Gwilym)

With the appearance and illusion of Summer

Across fruitless Macedonia,

And the cannon ceasing

On the hill it's ravaging roar,

A high eagle we saw,

Fluent its turn, gleaming its look,

And to him on the spot

Now give him strange greeting.

Happy in costly 

Colours of dawn, soars an eagle

Away yonder across myriad acres.

Leaves the burnt border of the east

Leaves the rose on brier branch;

Away to sight of Italy

And the costly pomp of the Summer Country..

The belovedness of the Middle lands,

And the sunshine gilding the land. 

Then through...

Desert regions, the pastures of France,

Where are no leafy groves

Nor charming lovely building,

Nor tender speech of maiden

But the world's ache - the grave's echo.

On he flies, then tarries

On the green floor of Parlwr y Glyn.

There is my life's energy,

And there is, blessed am I,

The lovely district of Rhyd Lefrith,

 And the day on the speckled hill-breasts.

Dafydd Ellis

(from the notebook he had with him in Salonica)

* NOTE: A Cywydd is one of the most important metrical forms in traditional Welsh poetry (cerdd dafod).  There are a variety of forms of the cywydd, but the word on its own is generally used to refer to the cywydd deuair hirion ("long-lined couplet") as it is by far the most common type. The cywydd consists of a series of seven-syllable lines in rhyming couplets, with all lines written in cynghanedd. One of the lines must finish with a stressed syllable, while the other must finish with an unstressed syllable. The rhyme may vary from couplet to couplet, or may remain the same. There is no rule about how many couplets there must be in a cywydd.

The first recorded examples of the cywydd date from the early 14th century. This was the favourite metre of the Poets of the Nobility, the poets working from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and it is still used today.

The cywydd deuair hirion and the related cywydd deuair fyrion, cywydd llosgyrnog and the awdl-gywydd all occur in the list of the twenty four traditional Welsh poetic meters adopted in the later Middle Ages.

Source:  Wikipedia

Other Sources:  

Article by Cledwyn Fychan on the website for the Society Farsarotul

www.farsarotul.org

https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/32622?fbclid=IwAR036YQchHjkIYAPFYCR_IPb6Uakl1rjx6uIZhukihcKPjElMp7du1a8fFU

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/local-news/lost-bard-trophy-ellis-penyfed-16316741

Photograph of Dafydd from https://www.farsarotul.org/nl21_6.htm

George Herbert Clarke (1873 - 1953) - Canadian poet and academic, Professor of English at the University of Tennessee

Born on 17th August 1873, George Herbert Clarke was a Canadian poet and academic. He attended McMaster University, graduating with a B.A. in 1891 and an M.A. in 1896. He served as a Professor at Mercier University, Georgia, (1901-1905), Peabody College, Tennessee (1908-11), and the University of Tennessee and University of the South until 1925. From 1925 he was head of the English Department at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario and editor-in-chief of Queen's Quarterly in 1944, and held that position until his death. 

In 1937 Clarke's poem "Hymn to the Spirit Eternal" was awarded a gold medal by the Governor-General for best poem appearing in the Canadian Authors Association literary magazine, Canadian Poetry, during 1936. Clarke received an LL.D. from McMaster in 1923, an LL.D. from Queen's in 1943, and a D.C.L. from Bishop's University in 1944. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1930, and was awarded the Society's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1943.

George Herbert Clarke was an editor of the "Sewanee Review", edited the WW1 Anthology  “A Treasury of War Poetry” which was published in 1917 and also wrote “Intermediate French Grammar: With Outlines of Historical Accidence” - George Herbert ClarkeL. R. Tanquerey (E.P. Dutton & Co., Jan 1903). A collection of his own poems was published in 1954.

“A Treasury of War Poetry” is available to read as a free download from Archive:

https://archive.org/stream/treasuryofwarpoe00clar2/treasuryofwarpoe00clar2_djvu.txt

“The Sewanee Review” is an American literary magazine established in 1892. It is the oldest continuously published quarterly in the United States and publishes original fiction and poetry, essays, reviews, and literary criticism.

 “The Virgin Of Albert”

Shyly expectant, gazing up at Her,

They linger, Gaul and Briton, side by side:

Death they know well, for daily have they died,

Spending their boyhood ever bravelier;

They wait: here is not priest or chorister,

Birds skirt the stricken tower, terrified;

Desolate, empty, is the Eastertide,

Yet still they wait, watching the Babe and Her.

Broken, the Mother stoops: the brutish foe

Hurled with dull hate his bolts, and down

She swayed, Down, till she saw the toiling swarms below, —

Platoons, guns, transports, endlessly arrayed:

"Women are woe for them! let Me be theirs,

And comfort them, and hearken all their prayers.!"

Source:  https://allpoetry.com/The-Virgin-Of-Albert

Postcard of the Virgin of Albert

A poem written by James Kirk during WW1

With thanks to Historian Debbie Cameron for finding this poem written by James Kirk and entitled “In Memory Of Private Charles Sloan HLI Old Monkland, Died Of Wounds August 1916”  - typed on white paper 

Museum reference: NLC-2013-33 Date:  8.1916

Poem by: James Kirk  Place Made: Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland.

On display: In Storage: Museums

Associated with:

1915 · 12th Service Battallion Highland Light Infantry · Sloan, Charles · 11 Rosepark Cottage, Coatbridge · See also the book "Coatbridge and the Great War" by Robert Corrins, Page 143 and NLC-2013-0031.