Brother Killed Same Day
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NOW HEAVEN
IS BY THE YOUNG INVADED
SECOND LIEUTENANT JAMES EKIN
The idea that the dead are now happy, that they are better off where they are, and that in the case of the youthful dead, they will now be young forever, is a consistent theme in consolatory verse. This is exactly the idea behind 'Flower of Youth' a poem by Katherine Tynan (1861-1931) from which James Ekin's inscription is taken. However, Tynan takes it slightly further and like Mrs Schuyler van Rensselaer's poem, 'It Is Well With the Child?', she implies that God positively wants the companionship of these young men.
Lest Heaven be thronged with grey-beards hoary,
God, who made boys for His delight,
Stoops in a day of grief and glory
And calls them in, in from the night.
When they come trooping from the war
Our skies have many a new gold star.
The inscription comes from verse four:
Now Heaven is by the young invaded;
Their laughter's in the House of God.
Stainless and simple as He made it
God keeps the heart o' the boy unflawed.
The old wise Saints look on and smile,
They are so young and without guile.
But the real point of the poem is to reassure the bereaved:
Oh! if the sonless mothers, weeping,
And the widowed girls could look inside
The glory that hath them in keeping
Who went to the Great War, and died,
They would rise and put their mourning off,
And say: 'Thank God, he has enough!'
There was a huge crowd 'invading' heaven on the day James Ekin died: 19, 240 young British men alone. All killed on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme and among them James's elder brother Leslie who was twenty-two.
I looked up the Ekins in the 1911 census to see if there were any other children and was relieved to see that there were five of them. The youngest was only one, a boy Sidney, so he was totally safe from harm - except that he wasn't. He was killed in Tunisia on 21 January 1943 aged thirty-two whilst serving with the Second Battalion The London Irish Rifles.
WHEN THE EBB TIDE FLOWS
PRIVATE JAMES EMERSON PROCTER
" ... at 3pm [on 20 May 1915] the Germans blew the mine, killing 11 men and wounding 22 others of the 1/5th Lincolnshires, four men also being missing believed killed."
Records of the 1/5th Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment
Private James Emerson Proctor was killed in this explosion, as was his only brother Private Ernest Arthur Proctor. The 1911 census records a sister in the family but it doesn't appear that there were any other children.
James Emerson's headstone inscription comes from a popular song, 'When the Ebb-Tide Flows', written in 1906 by Clifton Bingham with music by Stanley Gordon. His brother's inscription is of a completely different hue - 'Died for home, country and honour'. It makes me wonder whether their mother, Lillie Proctor, chose James' inscription and their father, John Walton Proctor, Ernest's.
The song is featured in a set of Bamforth's song cards. Originally they depicted the sailor as a fisherman but a wartime set shows him in uniform. There were three cards, each with a separate verse.
Out with the tide at the dawn of the day, under the morning star,
Gaily the fisher lad sailed away, over the deep afar
"Mother dear" cried the sailor lad,
Don't be lonely at home or sad
Though wild the storm and wide the foam,
There's One above will guide me home!"
I shall come home, when the ebb-tide flows,
Go where I may, there is One who knows.
Fierce though the gale, still His care will prevail,
I shall come home when the ebb-tide flows.
Over the foam, I shall come home, when the ebb-tide flows.
Father Eternal, though I may roam, guide Thou me home.
Grey haired and silent upon the quay there is a mother lone,
Never again to her heart came he, though the long years have flown.
Sound he sleeps in the trackless main,
Tides have ebbed and re-flowed again,
But still she smiles, because she knows
She'll meet him when Life's ebb-tide flows.
I AM THE RESURRECTION
AND THE LIFE
LIEUTENANT HOLT MONTGOMERY HEWITT
Montgomery Hewitt was one of three brothers killed in the war. Two of them, Montogmery and his younger brother William, were killed on the same day, 1 July 1916, the first day of the battle of the Somme. Only one of them, Montgomery, has a grave and was therefore able to have an inscription. The other two are commemorated on memorials to the missing, Ernest at Le Touret and William at Thiepval. The fourth brother survived the war.
The boys' parents took comfort from the words they chose for Montgomery's inscription:
"Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me , though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whoso believeth in me shall never die."
St John 11:25-6