Patrick MACGILL (1890-?) . Served in the London Irish Rifles. Wounded at Loos.
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Arthur James "Hamish" MANN.
Born April 5, 1896, at Broughty Ferry, Forfarshire. Educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh. In July 1915 he was gazetted and, at the end of August 1916, joined the 8th Battalion Black Watch at La Comte, a few miles southwest of Bethune. In March 1917 the whole battalion was laid low from a bout with the German Measles, but was in action again in April in time for the Battle of Arras. 2nd Lt Hamish Mann, commanding a platoon, was wounded during the assault and died the following day. "The Great Dead", written three days before, was his last poem:
Some lie in graves beside the crowded dead
In village churchyards; others shell holes keep,
Their bodies gaping, all their splendour sped.
Peace, O my soul... A Mother's part to weep.
Say: do they watch with keen all-seeing eyes
My own endeavours in the whirling hell?
Ah, God! how great, how grand the sacrifice.
Ah, God! the manhood of you men who fell!
And this is War... Blood and a woman's tears,
Brave memories adown the quaking years.
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Acting Captain
Charles John Beech MASEFIELD .
First cousin of poet John Masefield, born at Cheadle, Staffordshire.
Educated at Repton School. Wrote several notable papers on the
history & archaeology of Staffordshore, a novel (Gilbert Hermer,
1908), a book of poems in 1911 and a collection of satires in 1914.
In January 1915 he was commissioned in the 5th Battalion, North
Staffordshire Regiment, which went to France in March 1915. Awarded
the Military Cross for gallantry during a raid on enemy trenches near
Lens, during which he led his company under a heavy trench-mortar
barrage and single handedly attacked a party of the enemy. On
July 1st Masefield was taken enemy in an attack on Lens and died of
his wounds the following day.
~~~ THE SEASONS' DIFFERENCE AND OTHER POEMS.
~~~ DISLIKES: SOME MODER SATIRES.
(Fifield).
~~~ MORE SONGS BY THE FIGHTING MEN
(Eskine Macdonald).
~~~ GILBERT HERMER.
A Novel. (Blackwood).
I sometimes think that I have lived too long,
Who have heard so many a gay brave singer's song
Fail him for ever. ~ seen so many sails
Lean out resplendent to the evil gales,
Then Death, the wrecker, get his harvest in.
Oh, ill it is, when men lose all, to win;
Grief though it be to die, 'tis grief yet more
To live and count the dear dead comrades o'er.
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John MASEFIELD.
Born June 1, 1878 , Ledbury,
Herefordshire. Educated at King's School, Warwick, then
apprenticed aboard a windjammer which sailed around Cape Horn.
Leaving the sea, he then spent several years living
precariously in the United States. His work there in a carpet factory
was described in his autobiography,
IN THE MILL. With the
outbreak of war in August 1914, Masefield became an orderly at a
British Red Cross hospital in France. Here he experienced the
horror of modern warfare and planned how to improve conditions for the
wounded. He raised money himself, intending to create a
travelling field hospital but abandoned the idea after a request
for assistance in the Dardanelles. He subsequently took charge
of a motor boat ambulance service at Gallipoli in 1915. After the
Allied failure there, Masefield turned his attention to America
and undertook a series of lectures which enabled him to assess
American feeling towards the war and to plead the Allied cause.
 The
negative American impression of the Dardanelles campaign was one
contributory factor to his history of the Gallipoli campaign - an instant
success and described by one critic as ‘a book to strike the critical
faculty numb' and ‘too sacred for applause'. Such was Masefield's
triumph that an invitation was received from Sir Douglas Haig to write
the chronicle of the Somme. Whitehall bureaucracy forced
Masefield to abandon the original plan and the Somme chronicle
appeared eventually as two truncated volumes:
THE OLD FRONT LINE and
THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME.
Masefield was appointed poet laureate
in 1930. JOHN MASEFIELDS LETTERS FROM THE FRONT
1915-17, edited
by Peter Vansittart, appeared in 1984.
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Alan Alexander MILNE, 1882-1956. Commissioned into Royal Warwickshire Regiment, February 1915. Fought on the Somme.
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Harold MONRO (1879-1932). Served in a Royal Artillery anti-aircraft battery, and later in the War Office.
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Charles Edward MONTAGUE.
Born January 1, 1867, in Twickenham, Middlesex. Poet, novelist,
journalist, & man of letters noted for writings published in the
Manchester Guardian. Though 47, he served at the front in the
Great War with the 24th Battalion Royal Fusiliers as grenadier-sergeant,
then lieutenant, captain (intelligence), and as a press officer. He was
often chosen to escort VIPs during their visits to the front, including
H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Clemenceau & Lloyd George. Gen Haig
described him as "our white-haired lieutenant". Wrote two novels
based upon his experiences in WWI:
DISENCHANTMENT
(1922) & FIERY PARTICLES
(1923).
IN HOSPITAL
We from the sunless, airless trench,
The mud, the muddy bread, the stench,
Of No Man's Land, where English, French,
And Germans rest,
Came on an English April day
Through sun-filled railway-cuttings, gay
With English primroses, away
Into the West,
And found ourselves with Plymouth Sound
Beneath us, and Drake's bowling-ground
Above; and from the heights around
The bay there came
The boom of English guns, the call
Of English bugles. Best of all,
In this kind Devon hospital,
The old, the same
Strong gentleness of nursing eyes
And mothering hearts, and hands that bring
Health radiant as an English spring
To wounded, sick, and suffering.
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2nd Lieutenant
Francis St Vincent MORRIS (1896-1917).
Born 21 February 1896, Blackwell Vicarage, Ashbourne, Derbyshire, the youngest son of Canon and Mrs Morris. Educated Brighton College, where he was at school when the War started. At the end of summer term, 1915, he was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion Sherwood Foresters, the same regiment in which his father had served as chaplain. Once he realized his chances of getting to France were not favorable, he transferred into the Royal Flying Corps. A few weeks after his arrival at No. 3 Squadron, in France, in April 1917, he crashed during a blizzard at Vimy Ridge, fracturing both legs, one of which had to be amputated. He died on 29 April, three weeks after his crash, while under anaesthetic during a second surgery. He was 21. 2nd Lt Morris was buried at St Sever Cemetery, Rouen.
~~~ THE POEMS OF FRANCIS ST. VINCENT MORRIS (B.H. Blackwell, Oxford, 1917).
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Ralph Hale MOTTRAM (1883-1971).
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Hector Hugh MUNRO (pseud. "Saki") (1870-1916).
When war broke out enlisted in the Army. Refusing a commission, he served in the ranks. Killed as a sergeant on the Western Front at the battle of Beaumont-Hamel.
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Robert Malise Bowyer NICHOLS (1893-1944). Commissioned into the
Royal Field Artillery, October 1914. Served on the Western Front,
including on the Somme, until August 1916, at which time he was invalided home with shell-shock.
~~~ ARDOURS AND ENDURANCES (Chatto & Windus, 1917).
~~~ SUCH WAS MY SINGING (Collins, 1942).
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Wilfred OWEN, 1893-1918.
Born in Oswestry. Enlsited in the Aritists Rifles, 1915; commissioned into the Manchester Regiment, 1916. Served on the Western Front, January to June, 1917. Invalided home June 1917, sent to Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital, Scotland. Rejoined a reserve battalon of the Manchesters, September 1918; returned to the front and to his old battalion in the same month. Awarded Military Cross for gallantry in October 1918. Killed in action November 4 by machine-gun fire while leading his company across the Sambre Canal.
~~~ POEMS, introduction by Siegfried Sassoon (Chatto & Windus, 1920).
~~~ THE POEMS OF WILFRED OWEN, A new edition including many pieces now first published, and notices of his life and work by Edmund Blunden. (Chatto & Windus, 1931).
~~~ COLLECTED POEMS, edited by C. Day Lewis (Chatto & Windus, 1963).
~~~ WILFRED OWEN WAR POEMS AND OTHERS, Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Dominic Hibberd (Chatto & Windus, 1974).
~~~ COLLECTED LETTERS (Oxford, 1968).
~~~ Welland, D.S.R., WILFRED OWEN, A CRITICAL STUDY, (Chatto & Windus, 1960).
~~~ JOURNEY FROM OBSCURITY: WILFRED OWEN 1893-1918: MEMOIRS OF THE OWEN FAMILY., 3 volumes. (Oxford, 1963, 1964, 1965).
~~ Orrmont, Arthur, REQUIEM FOR WAR: THE LIFE OF WILFRED OWEN (Four Winds Press, NY, 1972).
~~ Stallworthy, Jon, WILFRED OWEN (Oxford, 1974).
~~ Hibberd, Dominic, OWEN THE POET (Macmillan, 1986).
~~ Hibberd, Dominic, WILFRED OWEN: THE LAST YEAR (Constable, 1992).
~~ Williams, Merryn, WILFRED OWEN
, Border Line Series. (Seren Books, Poetry Wales
Press Ltd., Mid Glamorgan, 1993).
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Nowell OXLAND. Poem published in the Times in 1915, written
en-route for Gallipoli. Killed Suvla Bay Aug 9 1915 as a Lieutenant
with 6th Border Regiment. Buried Green Hill Cemetery, Gallipoli.
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Harold PARRY.
Born, December 13, 1896, in Bloxwich, England. Educated at Exeter
College, Oxford. Commissioned in the King's Royal Rifle Corps, he
joined the 17th Battalion in the front line at Hebuterne on 25
September 1916. On 6 May 1917, 2nd Lt Parry was killed by shellfire
at Ypres.
I come from trenches deep in slime,
Soft slime so sweet and yellow,
And rumble down the steps in time
to souse "some shivering fellow".
I trickle in and trickle out
Of every nook and corner,
And, rushing like some waterspout,
Make many a rat a mourner.
I gather in from near and far
A thousand brooklets swelling,
And laugh aloud a great "Ha, ha!"
To flood poor Tommy's dwelling.
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Henry SIMPSON.
Born 5 June 1897 at Crosby-on-Eden, Carlisle. Educated Pembroke College, Cambridge. Commissioned in the 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers, June, 1917. Was in France at Ypres by August of that year. Killed by a sniper's bullet a year later on 29 August 1918 while the Battalion was in front line trenches at Strazeele, near Hazebrouck.
I cursed each tune
Of night-dim wood
And Naiad's stream,
By that mad moon
Asearch for blood
And the waxen gleam
Of dead faces
Under the trees
In the trampled grass,
Till the bloody traces
Of the agonies
Of night-time pass.
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Vivian Telfer PEMBERTON.
Born May 9, 1894, in Cheltenham. Educated at Cheltenham College and
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In 1914 he was commissioned in the
Royal Munster Fusiliers and later transferred to the Royal Garrison
Artillery. During the first half of 1918 he was awarded the Military
Cross. He was killed on 7 October 1918 at Sancourt, and buried at
Bellicourt British Cemetery, France. His collection of war & other
poems, REFLECTIONS IN VERSE was published by Grant Richards in 1919.
Captain the Honourable
Colwyn Erasmus Arnold PHILIPPS.
(1888-1915). Born 11 December 1888, London. Educated at Eton. Served in the Royal Horse Guards at Ypres. Killed in action Second Battle of Ypres, 13 May 1915. Mentioned in+ despatches January 1, 1916.
~~~ VERSES: PROSE FRAGMENTS: LETTERS FROM THE FRONT (Smith, Elder & Co., 1916).
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Sidney Walter POWELL (1878-1952). Born in London. Served in the Australian Army at Gallipoli, where he was wounded and invalided from the service.
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Herbert READ Born December 4, 1893, in
Kirbymoorside, Yorkshire: Educated at Leeds University. Commissioned
into the Yorkshire Regiment, January 1915. Promoted Captain in 1917.
Fought in Belgium and France. Mentioned in Despatches & awarded
Distinguished Service Order & Military Cross. After the war he worked in the Treasury & became
Assistant Keeper at the Victoria & Albert Museum. As well as several volumes of poetry, he
published literary & art criticism. Died in 1968.
~~~ NAKED WARRIORS (Art and Letters, 1919).
~~~ ECOLOGUES (Westminster: Cyril W. Beaumont, 1919).
~~~ IN RETREAT (L. and V. Woolf, 1925).
~~~ COLLECTED POEMS (Faber and Gwyer, 1926).
~~~ THE END OF A WAR (Faber & Faber, 1933).
~~~ COLLECTED POEMS and THE CONTRARY EXPERIENCE (Faber and Faber, 1963).
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John Edgell RICKWORD (1898-1982). Served in the infantry on the Western Front.
~~~ BEHIND THE EYES (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1921).
~~~ COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 1976).
|
 Corporal
Alexander ROBERTSON. Served with the York and Lancaster Regiment. Killed in action 1 July 1916 during the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
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Isaac ROSENBERG, 1890-1918.
Born in Bristol. Enlisted in King's Own Royal Lanacaster Regiment in 1915. Killed in action in France on 1 April 1918.
~~~ NIGHT AND DAY ,
(Privately Printed, London, 1912).
~~~YOUTH ,
(Privately Printed, London, 1915).
~~~ MOSES
(Paraga Printing Works, London, 1916).
~~~ POEMS (Heinemann, 1922).
~~~ "Trench Poems: Marching; Break of Day in the Trenches", POETRY, Vol IX, no. 3 (December, 1916), pp 128-9.
~~~ POEMS , Selected and edited by Gordon Bottomley; With an introductory memoir by Laurence Binyon.
(London: Heinemann, 1922).
~~~ THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ISAAC ROSENBERG: POETRY, PROSE, LETTERS AND SOME DRAWINGS. Edited by Gordon Bottomley and Denys Harding. With a forward by Siegfried Sassoon. (London, 1937).
~~~ THE COLLECTED POEMS OF ISAAC ROSENBERG, Edited by Gordon Bottomley and Denys Harding. With a forward by Siegfried Sassoon. (London, 1949).
~~~ ISAAC ROSENBERG, 1890~1918: A CATALOGUE OF AN EXHIBITION HELD AT LEEDS UNIVERSITY, MAY-JUNE 1959, TOGETHER WITH THE TEXT OF UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL. With an essay on the poetry by Jon Silkin and an essay on the art by Maurice de Sausmares. University of Leeds with Partridge Press, 1959. 36 pp. Contents include: [Text] Uncollected Verse Fragments; Unpublished Letters; [Catalogue] Poems in Manuscript; Letters; Printed Works; Books Owned by Rosenberg; Photographs of the Poet; Documents and other Material Relating to the Poet; Catalogue of Art: Oils, Gouaches, Water Colours & Drawings, Sketches in Letters & Manuscripts, Pictures Known to be in Existence but Not Exhibited, Supplementary Material.
~~~ Cohen, Joseph, JOURNEY TO THE TRENCHES: THE LIFE OF ISAAC ROSENBERG, 1890-1918. (NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1975).
~~~ Wilson, Jean Moorcraft, ISAAC ROSENBERG: POET AND PAINTER. (London: Cecil Wolf, 1975).
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Captain
J.M. ROSE-TROUP. Served in the Queen's Regiment. Was a POW in Germany.
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Major
Owen RUTTER (pseud. "Klip-Klip") (1889-1944). Served in France an Macedonia with the Wiltshire Regiment. Mentioned in Despatches.
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