Wordsworth
TRAILING CLOUDS OF GLORY
DO WE COME
SAPPER WILLIAM HENRY NIX
This is the third day running that the man commemorated hasn't been killed in action or died of wounds. Two days ago it was Private Manaton who died of tuberculosis, yesterday Major Seton who was murdered, and today Sapper Nix who died from dysentery. But whatever the cause of death, if you died between 4 August 1914 and 31 August 1921 and were serving in any branch of the armed forces you were deemed to be a casualty of the war.
William Nix was a plumber from Nottingham who was working in Canada when he enlisted late in 1915 in the 8th Battalion Canadian Engineers. The battalion landed in France on 30 March 1916 and in September 1916 were at Flers-Corcelette on the Somme. Nix is not mentioned in the diary by name but it would seem that an unusual number of soldiers seemed to be reporting sick in the days surrounding Nix's death.
His wife chose his inscription, which is not only unusual but its relevance seems pretty obscure. The line comes from the fifth stanza of Wordsworth's 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood'.
Our birth is a but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
When we are born some of the radiance of heaven, from which we came, still clings to us. Perhaps the inscription is an assurance that at our deaths we shall return to this glory.
NOR ENGLAND DID I KNOW
TILL THEN
WHAT LOVE I BORE TO THEE
PRIVATE BERNARD MANNING BROWNING
This is a rather poignant inscription for an Australian soldier who was born in England in 1888 and only went to Australia in 1912 when he was 24. It was chosen by his wife Phyllis. She too was born in England although the couple married in Australia in 1913.
Browning volunteered in January 1918. There was no conscription in Australia; he must have wanted to go. However, January 1918 is quite late to be enlisting if you were someone who was keen to get to the war. This could be explained by his answer to the question on the attestation form - Have you ever been rejected for military service? Browning's answer is 'Yes - made fit by operation'. He had wanted to go, but he needed to undergo an operation before he could be considered fit enough.
Browning's inscription comes from Wordsworth's 'I Travelled Among Unknown Men' of which this is the first verse:
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
I don't think Browning regretted going to Australia. He must have liked it since he persuaded his older brother, James, with his wife and two children, to join him in the country in 1913. But when England was in danger he realised what he felt for the old country.
Browning was killed in action at Beaurevoir on 3 October 1918, six weeks before the end of the war. The news went to his wife in Australia and his family in England only learnt of his death through friends. His sister therefore wrote to the Australian Red Cross to ask if they could tell her how he had died and whether he had been buried. They were able to assure her that he had been killed instantly and buried properly but spared her the full details, which they had learnt from the stretcher bearer who was first on the scene:
"I saw the above (all of B Coy) and one other man whose name I think was Lionel killed by one shell near Beaurevoir about 7 am during the attack about 1/2 hour or less after we hopped over. I was stretcherbearing & was following up behind them and was not 8 yards from them. Browning (killed instantly) was hit through head, Clarkson (instantly) thigh to knee badly smashed and concussion, Sgt, Crockett (instantly) all over body, Lionel (instantly) head, Langley hit on left collar bone and the artery was cut he was the only one with any life and I tried to dress the wound and succeeded in stopping the bleeding but he was dead before I finished ... Browning, Clarkson and Langley were all late joined us at Cappy, first time in line."
MORE BRAVE FOR THIS
THAT HE HATH MUCH TO LOVE
LIEUTENANT JAMES MCDONALD MC
James McDonald was a married man, a fact which provides a clue to his inscription. It comes from Wordsworth's poem 'Character of the Happy Warrior'. The poem asks the question - "Who is the happy warrior? Who is he that every man in arms would wish to be?" - before enumerating all the noble and honourable qualities that make a man a good soldier, describing him as someone who can withstand the 'storm and turbulence' of warfare but:
Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
Sweet images! which, whereso-er he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve;
More brave for this, that he hath much to love: -
And 'much to love' meant he had much to lose, which explains why in Wordsworth's eyes he was 'more brave' than those who were not family men.
More than one inscription quotes from Wordsworth's poem, and the term 'happy warrior' had passed into general usage as a description for an all-round good sort. Presumably none of the people who quoted from Wordsworth's Happy Warrior were familiar with Herbert Read's poem of the same title:
His wild heart beats with painful sobs
His strain'd hands clench an ice-cold rifle
His aching jaws grip a hot parch'd tongue
His wide eyes search unconsciously.
He cannot shriek.
Bloody saliva
Dribbles down his shapeless jacket.
I saw him stab
And stab again
A well-killed Boche.
This is the happy warrior,
This is he ...
McDonald had been born in Scotland in 1878 but by the time he enlisted in September 1915 he was a grocer in Vancouver, British Columbia. He served with the 72nd Battalion Canadian Infantry and arrived in France in August 1916. Severely wounded in his right foot and right temple, he was out of action for the early months of 1917. In July 1918 he went home on leave to Dumbarton in Scotland, returning to the front on 17 August. He was killed just over a month later.
GIVE UNTO ME ...
THE SPIRIT OF SELF-SACRIFICE
PRIVATE EDMUND CULLINGFORD
What is self-sacrifice? It's giving up one's own interests, happiness and hopes for the sake of duty. This inscription is a salutary reminder that the men who fought in the First World War weren't naive enthusiasts for war but were doing their duty - and some men had to submit themselves to it. At the distance of a hundred years many people today can comfortably assume that those who fought were in some way different from themselves, they wanted to go, they wanted to fight, they were happy to give up their current lives, they were even happy to give up their lives. But this inscription shows the firmness with which some men had to speak to themselves in order to do their duty.
The lines come from Wordsworth's Ode to Duty. The poet claims that there are some people who just naturally do their duty - "Who do thy [duty's] work, and know it not". And then there are other's, like him, who "deferred the task, in smoother walks to stray". But now, recognising the peace that comes from knowing that you are doing your duty, he asks:
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh, let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
Edmund Cullingford was a volunteer. He served with the 9th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment, which was raised in York in September 1914. According to his medal card, he went with the Battalion to Egypt in December 1915. In July 1916, it returned to Europe and on 9 October 1917 it took part in the attack at Poelcappelle.
The British barrage was terrific, it moved at a rate of 100 yards in four minutes with the soldiers advancing behind it over ground that had been churned into an endless mass of shell holes and mud so as to be almost impassable. However, despite the fierce barrage the German gun emplacements remained virtually impervious and the British troops were met by murderous machine gun fire from these 'pill-boxes', which relentlessly thinned their ranks. At the end of the day the 9th West Yorkshires had lost 12 officers and 203 other ranks killed, wounded and missing. Cullingford was one of the missing, his body located at map reference V.20.a.3.8 in September 1919 and identified by his disc. Think of what he faced and think again about the inscription his father chose for him, "Give unto me ... the spirit of self-sacrifice".
"BELOVED AND HONOURED
FAR AS HE WAS KNOWN"
WORDSWORTH
LIEUTENANT HOLROYD BIRKETT-BARKER
Birmingham Daily Post
Thursday 23 August 1917
Second Lieutenant Holroyd Birkett Barker, R.G.A. who ... died in a military hospital on 15th inst., aged 30, was the eldest son of Councillor T. Birkett Barker, J.P., M.I.M.E., ... He volunteered for military service in 1915. Lieutenant Birkett Barker was a prominent golfer, and won the gold medal for Warwickshire in 1912-13-14. In 1914 he lost the Midland Counties Championship by one stroke and in the same year competed in the Amateur Championship at Sandwich.
In January 1916 the same newspaper reported that all four of Mr T Birkett Barker's sons had now enlisted but that Fred, who had returned from farming in Canada, had just been invalided home suffering from partial paralysis and neuritis, the after effects of a severe illness. The 20 April 1917 edition carried the news that Greville Birkett Barker was in a London hospital suffering from shock and wounds having been shot down while flying at the front. Four months later it announced Holroyd's death from malaria in Salonika and in September 1918 that Allen Noel Birkett Barker had died of wounds at a Casualty Clearing Station in France.
Both Holroyd and Allen have the same inscription - "Beloved and honoured as far as he was known". It comes from Wordsworth's The Excursion:
All but a scattered few, live out their time,
Husbanding that which they possess within,
And go to the grave, unthought of. Strongest minds
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least; else surely this Man had not left
His graces unreveal'd and unproclaim'd.
But, as the mond was fill'd with inward light
So not without distinction had he lived,
Beloved and honoured - far as he was known.
LOVED WITH SUCH LOVE
AND WITH SUCH SORROW MOURNED
GUNNER LESLIE EDWARD JONES
Gunner Leslie Jones was his parents only son. He had three sisters but no brothers. His father, Edward Jones, was a caterer and he was his father's caterers manager. The report of his death in the Essex Newsman, on 22 September 1917, records that he "had been for nine years the representative in Southend of his father, the lessee of the Pier Refreshment Rooms, and proprietor of the White House, High Street"
Jones enlisted on 30 June 1915 and served with 2/B Battery Honourable Artillery Company, going with them to the front on 20 June 1917. The Battery took part in the opening battles of Third Ypres. Jones was killed on 3 September and buried in a small cemetery near St Jan.
His inscription, chosen by his mother, comes from The Wanderer, a long poem by William Wordsworth:
Oh blest are they who live and die like these,
Loved with such love, and with such sorrow mourned.
Wordsworth's 'blessed' are those who live and die in the heart of their community, surrounded by their family and friends who love them, bury them, and mourn them.
HAPPY WARRIOR
PRIVATE HARRY NOEL LEA
I have a friend whose father was killed in the Second World War and this is the inscription his mother put on her husband's grave. My friend has always hated it, feeling that his mother had insulted father's memory by describing him as a gung-ho, trigger-happy soldier. He had no idea that the term 'happy warrior' derived from a poem by William Wordsworth and that it described a soldier of quite different qualities.
Wordsworth asks the question, in his 1807 poem, "Who is the happy warrior? Who is he, that every man in arms would wish to be?". He then gives the answer: a man who is brave, modest, faithful, resolute, diligent and magnanimous, an honourable man, a man of high endeavour guided by reason and duty, a home loving man and thus "more brave for this, that he hath much to love".
The term gained in stature throughout the nineteenth century, enhanced by G.F. Watts painting titled 'The Happy Warrior', which shows a young knight on the point of death being embraced/greeted by an ethereal figure, presumably welcoming him to heaven. By the beginning of the twentieth century the phrase had become a universal term of approval for someone who had led a good, productive life serving the state.
Having told him all this, my friend realised that he had done his mother - and his father - a disservice.
Harry Noel Lea, a bank clerk from Sydney, enlisted on 15 January 1917, served with the 17th Australian Infantry, part of the 2nd Australian Division, and died of wounds received on 9 October when the Division were in action at Poelcapelle.
ATTIRED IN SUDDEN BRIGHTNESS
LIKE A MAN INSPIRED
SECOND LIEUTENANT TRICE MARTIN
In his poem, 'The Character of the Happy Warrior', published in 1807, William Wordsworth enumerated the qualities of the soldiers on whom the security of Great Britain depended during the Napoleonic Wars. One hundred and ten years later he could have been describing the young men on whom Britain's security again depended.
Second Lieutenant Martin's inscription quotes Wordsworth's poem and can perhaps be best understood by reading the rest of the section in which it appeared. In answer to the the question, 'Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he whom every man in arms should wish to be?' Wordsworth enumerated his numerous qualities, which included:
... who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which heaven has join'd
Great issues, good or bad for human-kind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness like a Man inspired;
And through the heat of conflict keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need:
The lines had a great resonance with the soldiers of the First World War, as can be seen by the following letter, which Second Lieutenant Alexander Gillespie wrote to his father on the eve of an attack.
Trenches: September 24 1915
My Dear Daddy,
... Before long I think we shall be in the thick of it, for if we do attack, my company will be one of those in front, and I am likely to lead it; not because I have been specially chosen for that, but because someone must lead, and I have been in the company the longest. I have no forebodings, for I feel that so many of my friends will charge by my side, and if a man's spirit may wander back at all, especially to the places where he is needed most, then Tom himself will be here to help me ...
It will be a great fight, and even when I think of you, I would not wish to be out of this. You remember Wordsworth's 'Happy Warrior':
Who if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad, for human kind,
Is happy as a lover, and is attired
With sudden brightness like a man inspired.
Well, I never could be all a happy warrior should be, but it will please you to know that I am very happy, and whatever happens, you will remember that. Well, anything one writes at a time like this seems futile, because the tongue of man can't say all that he feels - but I thought I would send this scribble with my love to you and Mother.
Always your loving
Bey
'Bey', Alexander Gillespie, was killed the next day. His body was never found and he is commemorated on the Loos Memorial, hence he has no grave and no inscription. The Tom he refers to was his brother, Lieutenant Thomas Gillespie, who was killed in action on 18 October 1914 and also has no grave.