For the Fallen is the title of a poem by Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), which also boasts the world’s most famous words of remembrance:
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), a graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, was already a published poet when he entered the war as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy Division. On his way to Gallipoli, he died from acute blood poisoning and was buried in an olive grove on the Greek island of Skyros by a party of colleagues which included Bernard (later Baron) Freyberg (1889-1963) #3174.
Brooke’s most famous poem, The Soldier, written before the horror of war in the trenches, included:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
A headstone remembering Robert Nevill Cobbold (1904-1944) #470 of the Welsh Guards, killed at Monte Cassino, bears a quotation from this poem.
Lord Kitchener (1850-1916) #733 is remembered nationwide for his recruiting poster “Your Country needs You,” but is recalled by Horace Bray (1896-1918) in his verse The Kitchener Chap:
He wore twin stripes of gold upon
An empty tunic sleeve;
His eyes were blue, his face so young
One hardly could believe
That he had seen the death and hate
That make the whole world grieve.
Horace, a Canadian, was seriously wounded at Ypres and later died in a collision in England.
And finally, Young Love (edited) by another Canadian, Bernard Freeman Trotter (1890-1917):
A Kiss
She kissed me when she said good-bye
A child’s kiss neither bold nor shy.
We had met but a few short summer hours
Talked of the sun, the wind, the flowers
Sports and people; had rambled through
A casual catchy song or two,
And walked with arms linked to the car
By the light of a single misty star.
And so she lifted her dewey face
And kissed me – but without a trace
Of passion, – and we said good-bye…
A child’s kiss, …neither bold nor shy
My friend, I like you – it seemed to say –
Here’s to our meeting again some day!
Some happier day… Good-bye.
He never returned.
Click here for the 48 Cobbolds who died in two World Wars.
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.
Anthony Cobbold
