The cause is good

 

A relieved platoon of 1/5th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
at Hébuterne, France c. 1916 by Fred Roe

Previous posts on this blog have shared Lieutenant Cyril Winterbotham’s two anthologized poems, “The Cross of Wood” and “A Christmas Prayer from the Trenches.” Although a posthumous collection of Winterbotham’s poetry was published in 1916 or 1917 (Poems by JJ Bank and Sons of Cheltenham), it was for private distribution, and I have been unable to find a record of any copy that still exists. 

However, while reading the Fifth Glo’ster Gazette (one of the earliest and best-known of the trench journals), I stumbled across a review of Winterbotham’s Poems and was able to identify an additional two of his works. The review quotes the full text of Winterbotham’s “A Casualty” and references another of his poems about a “d...d awful trench” called Marguerite.* After a bit of searching, I found that the poems had each been published anonymously in the trench magazine before Winterbotham’s death: “A Casualty” in the August 1915 issue and “To Marguerite” in the Christmas 1915 issue. As the review in the Fifth Glo'ster Gazette notes of Winterbotham’s poems, “The verses are simple enough, but they ring true.”*

Cyril Winterbotham

A Casualty

“Come for the cause is good. Stout heart, strong hand.”
“England needs now. Death—for your native land?”
“The cause is good.”

Poor hackneyed words. But yet his manhood woke,
And held it true—it matters not who spoke.
         The cause was good.

Poor hackneyed words. We heard them once again
From dying lips, teeth clenched against the pain.
For thus he spoke, and so his loss was gain,
        “The cause is good.”
—Cyril Winterbotham

In the first stanza, the line “The cause is good” is the enthusiastic promise made by an army recruiter, but it does not gain its full meaning until it is whispered by a dying soldier.

During August 1916, of the 1,000 men serving with the 1/5 Gloucesters, over 500 were killed, wounded, or reported missing.** Winterbotham was killed while leading Company C of the 1/5 battalion of the Gloucesters in an attack on a German trench near Ovillers-la-Boiselle on the evening of 27 August 1916. In that attack, every officer was either wounded or killed, and eighteen men gave their lines to secure the trench. The next month, the Fifth Glo’ster Gazette reported, 

"Of those of our Battalion who have been killed or who are missing, it is not possible now to write. For one thing our heart is heavy. For another, we are forbidden to publish that list of those who have laid down their lives, without which we should not be able to do justice to those who have fallen. Meanwhile, we who treasure their memories very dearly, are proud that we have lived among them, known and loved them...."***

Clara Winterbotham, 
The Wilson Collection

Another who loved Cyril Winterbotham was his sister, Clara. During the war, she volunteered as a full-time VAD nurse at the Cheltenham hospital from 1915 to 1919. She attained the rank of Quartermaster for the last eight months of her service, for which she was awarded the MBE.†

In 1918, Clara Winterbotham became the first woman to serve on Cheltenham’s city council, and in 1921 she became the town's first woman mayor, serving until 1923, then again from 1944–1946. In July of 1919 as chair of Cheltenham’s Art Gallery and Museum Committee, Clara led the committee to commission a war painting to honor local soldiers.** Her brother Cyril is the young helmeted officer depicted in the center of the painting (top of this post).  

After his death, those who knew Cyril wrote of his warm-hearted humour in difficult circumstances. Here is his unsigned poem “To Marguerite.” 

To Marguerite

Oh beautiful, I found thee once
    When summer winds blew warm, and sweet.
I said “The fellow is a dunce
    Who does not love my Marguerite.”

A gunner's shelter in a trench, Thiepval
William Orpen, 1917

Thy form symmetrical, and clean,
Made my poor heart with rapture beat;
Birds, mice, and insects—N’ere so mean
A thing but loved by Marguerite.

“And here,” I said “The winter blas
I shall not fear. The snow and sleet
Shall harm me not while I hold fast
Unto my love—My Marguerite.”

I guarded thee with tender pride 
        By day and night, and all too fleet
The summer and the autumn died, 
        And left me still with Marguerite.

Then came the equinoctial gale,
The rain descended like a sheet,
Followed by frost, and snow, and hail,
And Oh, the change in Marguerite!



Her symmetry went with the wind,
Her beauty was a wreck complete,
Be-fouled, disordered, who could find
Ought but disgust in Marguerite?

Thy ruin is beyond repair.
Deep in the mud, a good five feet,
Object of horror, and despair,
I leave thee now, My Marguerite.

Oh, blame me not that rain should quench
They love that throve in summer heat.
You’re known as “That d...d awful trench,” 

—Na poo! Na poo! My Marguerite!††

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*Bishop Frodsham, “The Wings of Life” [book review of Poems by Cyril William Winterbotham, printed for private circulation, J.J. Banks and Son, Cheltenham] in Fifth Glo’ster Gazette, June 1917, no. 19.
** Neela Mann, “The story of Cheltenham’s Official WW1 Memorial Painting,” 2018.
*** “Bricks from the Editor’s Pack,” Fifth Glo’ster Gazette, Sept. 1916, no. 14.
† Clara Frances Winterbotham, VAD Red Cross: https://vad.redcross.org.uk/record?rowKey=230931
†† This poem was published unsigned in the Fifth Glo’ster Gazette’s Christmas 1915 issue, no. 8. The issue also includes Winterbotham’s unsigned but anthologized poem “A Christmas Prayer from the Trenches” and a poem that Anne Powell in A Deep Cry attributes to Winterbotham: “O.C. Platoon Enquiries,” signed C.W.