Becourt British Military Cemetery, France |
Dear Happy Boy
— Second
Lieutenant James Douglas Harding, aged 17
A Mother’s Love Lies Here
—Private
William Ogston Craib, aged 28
If This Is Victory, Then Let God Stop All Wars, His Loving
Mother
—Private
Frank Hitchin, aged 18
Here Lies a Father’s Hope, A Mother’s Pride, and a Wife’s
Dependence
— Private John
Prentice, aged 27
Vivian Telfer Pemberton, a twenty-four-year-old officer with the Royal Garrison
Artillery’s 216th Siege Battalion, was awarded the Military Cross in
the summer of 1918: “When the enemy had broken through he kept his guns in action
until the last possible moment, and when forced to withdraw them organised his
men so that they kept up a steady rifle fire on the enemy. His coolness and courage saved a most
critical situation.”* The title of his poem “An Only Son’s Dying
Lament” references the courage required by those on the home front to bear the
immense losses of the war, while the poem’s final stanza concludes with an
unromanticized depiction of the suffering of the soldiers.
An Only Son’s Dying Lament
I’m not a soldier born and bred,
I joined because they told me
England needed all her sons.
I love old England’s country scenes,
The old cliffs by the sea,
The peaceful, mist-clad Devon moors,
‘Tis there that I would be.
I love the gentle English girls,
I love their graceful ways,
I love to watch the sheep dog’s work,
And the lazy cattle graze.
They used to give me all I asked
In those dear days of old,
They gave me wine, they gave me love,
And never asked for gold.
But now I do not ask for love,
For riches, wine, or song,
They tell me that I’ll soon be well,
But I know they are wrong.
A stretcher party brought me here,
My left leg hurt like sin,
They sent my pay-book and my gold
Back to my next of kin.
It is not much for which I ask,
I know my knell has rung,
But they will not give me anything
To cool my burning tongue.
—Vivian
Telfer Pemberton
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* Supplement to the Edinburgh Gazette, July 29, 1918, p. 2705
** “Captain Oswald Pemberton,” Imperial War Museum Lives of the First World War, https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/3464979.
† “Major
Alexander Lancaster Pemberton, Imperial
War Museum Lives of the First World War, https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/3464550.
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