For remembrance [microform]

1 July – 18 November 1916

Battle of the Somme

EY EERE

EucENE Crompre. Captain, 4th Gordon High-
landers. (Killed in action, 23rd April 1917.)
More Songs by the Fighting Men (Erskine
Macdonald).

RicnarD Dennys. Captain, Loyal North Lancs.
Regt. (Wounded in Somme advance, 12th
July 1916. Died, 24th July.) There is No
Death, With Foreword by Captain Desmond
Coke (John Lane),

Henry Lionen Frevp. Lieut. Royal Warwick-
shire Regt. (Killed in action, Ist July 1916.)
Poems and Drawings (Birmingham : Cornish
Bros.).

LIEUT,, GRENADIER GUARDS,

aiden iio

W. N. Hodgson 51
Ipswich. In March 1918 he took a First
Class in Classical Moderations at Oxford ;
next year, in the first days of the war, he
obtained a commission in the 9th Devon
Regiment. He was mentioned in de-
spatches, and in October 1915 the Military
Cross was conferred upon him; on the
Ist July 1916 he fell in the battle of the
Somme. There is strength and spiritual
and emotional beauty in his verse and that
air of plain sincerity which distinguishes
all these poets who were soldiers. At
least two or three of his poems will have
an abiding place in all war anthologies,
and one of such must assuredly be his
* Before Battle’ :

By all the glories of the day
And the cool evening’s benison ;
By the last sunset touch that lay
Upon the hills when day was done ;
By beauty lavishly outpoured,
And blessings carelessly received,
By all the days that I have lived,
Make me a soldier, Lord.

CAPTAIN, ROYAL HORSE GUARDS.

—U_"={"_"_—_—_—_—_——
60 For Remembrance
een nro eh enc Se

Wyndham Tennant’s one small volume,
Worple Flit and Other Poems. A lieutenant
of the Grenadiers, he fell in battle on the
Somme at the age of nineteen—one year
older than Chatterton. He passed the
proofs of his book on the eve of the attack
in which he was to die, and finished a last
letter that night to his mother, Lady
Glenconner, with the quotation that he
uses on his title page :

High heart, high speech, high deeds, ’mid honour-

EWART ALAN MACKINTOSH, M.C.

eee
112 For Remembrance

Christi College, Oxford, and took up
residence there in October of that year.
He was looking forward to devoting him-
self to literature as a profession when the
war, at a stroke, shattered all his plans, and
he at once joined the Oxford O.T.C. In
January 1916 he obtained a commission
in the Oxford and Bucks Regiment, but
was transferred to the 19th Lancashire
Fusiliers and went with them to France
in November 1915. He had a hard winter
in the trenches and was in the thick of the
fighting in July 1916. His letters home
show how proioundly he was impressed
by the horrors of war, but his native
cheerfulness never failed him ; his humour
and good spirits were proof aguinst all the
darkness and danger of his surroundings.
After the Somme advance he was made
intelligence officer, and then adjutant.
While walking down a village street on
29th November 1916, he was struck by
a fragment of a stray shell; the wound

Geoffrey Bache Smith 113
seemed slight but became septic, and he
died three days later. Shortly afterwards
his brother was killed in Mesopotamia,
and they were the only sons of their
mother, who was a widow.

9 April – 16 May 1917

Battle of Arras (1917)

SERC

eee ee
126 For Remembrance

inaugurated, :.. ad become a sergeant
before the war. It is likely that the man
whose story he tells was one of the motley
new recruits who marched in his platoon.
He had risen to be company sergeant-major
when he was sniped at the battle of Arras,
while in the act of cheering his company in
the moment of victory. Before he went to
France, he had fought at Gallipoli, and
several of his ballads and poems are of
incidents in that campaign, but I think I
like best some later verse of his in which
he accepts the probability of death for
himself, not * with a laughing death-song’
but with a prayer that matches it in per-
fect courage, and that, in the manner of his
going, would seem to have been granted :
Lond, if it be Thy will
That I enter the great shadowed valley that
lies
Silent just over the hill,
Grant they may say, ‘There’s a comrade that
dies
Waving his hand to us still.’

W. H. Littlejohn 127

SERC

Knowing that I have answered Duty’s call,
Knowing that I have died in England’s hour

—but he met his fate heroically leading
his platoon in that Arras advance in which
Littlejohn fell.

Under whatever premonitions may have

16 April – 9 May 1917

Second Battle of the Aisne

HUG

94 For Remembrance
easeasibnp linia iaeindncalamembioaineciccoemins ganas ie cicoutoe sc bo

his services to his country. Between
August and December 1914 he was terribly
impatient at his enforced exile. Writing
of the battle of the Aisne he said: “I
know of one gentleman of England .. .
who thinks himself accurs’d he was not
there.” I think he was never so pleased
to see any one in his life as he was to
welcome th» man who came out to take
his place and so set him free to come home.
My brother was an idcalist, and to him
his King and Country were not mere
names, but a very real part of himself.
That he came from the other end of the
world to fight for them is, I think, sufficient
proof of the realness of his feelings.’
In February 1915 he rejoined his old
regiment, as captain of the 8rd Battalion,
and in France, in April, was transferred
to the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of
Wellington’s Regiment, which he was com-
manding in his last fight. At home, in
happier years, he was assistant secretary

George Robins 95

27 May – 6 June 1918

Third Battle of the Aisne

HUG

94 For Remembrance
easeasibnp linia iaeindncalamembioaineciccoemins ganas ie cicoutoe sc bo

his services to his country. Between
August and December 1914 he was terribly
impatient at his enforced exile. Writing
of the battle of the Aisne he said: “I
know of one gentleman of England .. .
who thinks himself accurs’d he was not
there.” I think he was never so pleased
to see any one in his life as he was to
welcome th» man who came out to take
his place and so set him free to come home.
My brother was an idcalist, and to him
his King and Country were not mere
names, but a very real part of himself.
That he came from the other end of the
world to fight for them is, I think, sufficient
proof of the realness of his feelings.’
In February 1915 he rejoined his old
regiment, as captain of the 8rd Battalion,
and in France, in April, was transferred
to the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of
Wellington’s Regiment, which he was com-
manding in his last fight. At home, in
happier years, he was assistant secretary

George Robins 95

28–31 May 1918

Battle of Cantigny

HUG

94 For Remembrance
easeasibnp linia iaeindncalamembioaineciccoemins ganas ie cicoutoe sc bo

his services to his country. Between
August and December 1914 he was terribly
impatient at his enforced exile. Writing
of the battle of the Aisne he said: “I
know of one gentleman of England .. .
who thinks himself accurs’d he was not
there.” I think he was never so pleased
to see any one in his life as he was to
welcome th» man who came out to take
his place and so set him free to come home.
My brother was an idcalist, and to him
his King and Country were not mere
names, but a very real part of himself.
That he came from the other end of the
world to fight for them is, I think, sufficient
proof of the realness of his feelings.’
In February 1915 he rejoined his old
regiment, as captain of the 8rd Battalion,
and in France, in April, was transferred
to the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of
Wellington’s Regiment, which he was com-
manding in his last fight. At home, in
happier years, he was assistant secretary

George Robins 95