In the research of my English families, I have discovered, much to my horror, that many of the male members of the families, if born around 1890, had fallen in what is called "The Great War". We in America were spared the great loss of life, what seems to be the loss of a whole generation. I don't think any family made it out of the war unscathed from the effects of that horrible experience. Here is my attempt to honor those that have fallen in those muddy trenches and faraway fields.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields.

~ Major John McRae, 1915 ~

World War I (The Great War)

Andrew Robinson Lowes

9 February 1915

Private (2509)

Rifleman, 9th Battalion, London Regiment (Queen Victoria's Rifles)

Wulvergem Churchyard, Heuvelland, West Vlaandereren, Belgium

(son of William and Isabella Lowes of Chesters, Haltwhistle NBL)

War! that mad game the world so loves to play.

~ Jonathan Swift ~

Robert Ferguson Mowbray

24 September 1916, The Somme

Lance Corporal (13714)

11th Battalion, The Border Regiment

Carlisle (Dalton Road) Cemetery, Carlisle, Cumberland

(grandson of Joseph and Hannah Dickinson Mowbray (born Whitfield NBL) of Brampton CUM)

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

~ Otto Von Bismark ~

George Elliott Lowes Bowlby

15 March 1916, Houplines, Armentieres Sector, France

Captain

8th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment

IX. F. 1., Cite Bonjean Military Cemetery, Armentieres, France

(Son of The Rev. Alfred Elliott Bowlby and Lilian Bowlby (descended from the Dickinsons of Whitfield), of Harold House, Harold St., Dover)

I look upon the People and the Nation as handed on to me as an responsibility conferred upon me by God,
and I believe, as it is written in the Bible,
that it is my duty to increase this heritage for which one day I shall be called upon to give an account.
Whoever tries to interfere with my task I shall crush.

~ German Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1913 ~

William Henry Lowes Lynch

9 August 1915, Gallipoli, Turkey

Trooper (11/71)

Wellington Mounted Rifles, New Zealand Expeditionary Force

5., Chunuk Nair (New Zealand) Memorial, Gallipoli, Turkey

(Son of Ossian P. and Annie Lynch (dau. of William Lowes), of Paekakariki, Wellington NZ)

Older men declare war.  But it is the youth that must fight and die.

~ Herbert Hoover ~

Oscar Avonmore Lynch

5 July 1915

Lance Corporal (5/77B)

New Zealand Army Service Corps

E. 176, Alexandria (Chatby) Military and War Memorial Cemetery, Alexandria, Egypt

(Son of Ossian P. and Annie Lynch (dau. of William Lowes), of Paekakariki, Wellington NZ)

Clive Montagu Joicey

5 June 1917

Captain

4th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers

Sp. Mem. 3, Brown's Copse Cemetery, Roeux, Pas de Calais, France

(son of Col. and Mrs. Edward Joicey of Blenkinsopp Hall, Haltwhistle NBL)

AFTERMATH

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz—
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench—
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack—
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads— those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet...?
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.

~ Siegfried Sassoon, March 1919 ~

John Smith Jackson

13 April 1918

Private (260362

1st Battalion, The Border Regiment

Panel 6, Ploegsteert Memorial, Comines-Warneton, Hainaut, Belgium

(son of Thomas and Mary Jane Henderson of Windy Hall, Kirkhauge [sic], Alston CUM)

John William Pearson

15 November 1916

Serjeant (1783)

1st/4th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers

IV. A. 15., Dernancourt Communal Cemetery Extension, Somme, France

(husband of Martha Sarah Pearson of 4, Railway Cottages, Greenhead NBL)

THE QUIET

I could not understand the sudden quiet—
The sudden darkness— in the crash of fight,
The din and glare of day quenched in a twinkling
In utter starless night.

I lay an age and idly gazed at nothing,
Half-puzzled that I could not lift my head;
And then I knew somehow that I was lying
Among the other dead.

~ Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 1917 ~

John George Hunter

18 October 1918

Lance Corporal (42144)

12^th Battalion, Manchester Regiment

II. C. 6., Montay-Neuvilly Road Cemetery, Montay, Nord, France

(son of Mary Jane Hunter of 6, Railway Cottages, Greenhead, Carlisle)

"If any ask us why we died; Tell them 'Because our fathers lied,' "

~ Rudyard Kipling ~

William Snowdon

4 November 1918

Private (61800)

4th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment

II. B. 18., Le Cateau Military Cemetery, Nord, France

(son of William and M.E. Snowdon of College Farm, Greenhead, Carlisle)

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.

~ Charles Hamilton Sorley 1895 - 1915 ~

Joseph George Irving

9 October 1918

Private (154194)

2nd Battalion, Machine Gun Corps (Infantry)

E. 2., Forenville Military Cemetery, Nord, France

(son of Mrs. Jane Elizabeth Irving of The Towers, Gilsland, Carlisle)

Arthur Lee Lowes

9 August 1918

Lance Corporal (52291)

1^st Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales Own)

I. H. 4., Kemmel No. 1 French Cemetery, Heuvelland, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium

(son of Alice Lowes of 15, Spittal Terrace, Hexham NBL and the late Robert Parker Lowes)

HAVE YOU NEWS OF MY BOY JACK?

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
"Has any one else had word of him?"
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

~ Rudyard Kipling, 1915 ~

W. Batey

19 September 1917

Private (200881)

22nd (Tyneside Scottish) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers

XXII. K. 6., Etaples Military Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France

(son of Mary and the late James Batey of Chester Holme, Bardon Mill-on-Tyne, formerly of Whinnintly, Haydon Bridge NBL)

Who made the Law that men should die in meadows?
Who spake the word that blood should splash in lanes?
Who gave it forth that gardens should be bone-yards?
Who spread the hills with flesh, and blood, and brains?
Who made the Law?

~ Leslie Coulson 1889 - 1916 ~

Alfred Robson

20 September 1918

Private (35501)

9th Battalion, Duke of Wellington's (West Riding Regiment)

IV. C. 10., Gouzeaucourt New British Cemetery, Nord, France

(Son of Mary Harriet Robson, of Wesley House, Haltwhistle NBL, and the late Ralph Robson)

Arthur William Errington

15 September 1916, The Somme

Private (10/2)

1st/4th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers

Pier and Face 10 B 11 B and 12 B., Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France

(Son of William and Harriet Errington, of Newton St., Haltwhistle NBL; husband of Kathleen Drinkill (formerly Errington), of 6, Garden Place, Church St., Drypool, Hull)

ON PASSING THE NEW MENIN GATE

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, -
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.
 
Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
'Their name liveth for evermore' the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

 ~ Siegfried Sassoon ~

George Reay

5 June 1917

Private (266322)

20th (Tyneside Scottish) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers

Bay 2 and 3., Arras Memorial, Pas de Calais, France

(Son of Thomas and Jane Reay, of 8, Alexandra Terrace, Hexham NBL)

"Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young."

~ A E Houseman 1859 - 1936 ~

Charles Lindsay Claude Bowes-Lyon

23 October 1914

Lieutenant

3rd Battalion; attd. 1st Battalion, Black Watch (Royal Highlanders)

XXX. D. 11., New Irish Farm Cemetery, Ieper, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium

(son of the Hon. Francis and Lady Anne Bowes-Lyon, of Ridley Hall, Bardon Mill, NBL (one of the Queen Mother's cousins).)

THE LAST POST

The bugler sent a call of high romance--
"Lights out! Lights out!" to the deserted square.
On the thin brazen notes he threw a prayer,
"God, if it's this for me next time in France ...
O spare the phantom bugle as I lie
Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,
Dead in a row with the other broken ones
Lying so stiff and still under the sky,
Jolly young Fusiliers too good to die."

~ Robert Graves ~

World War II

William George Mowbray

5 March 1945

Sergeant (1685751), W. Op/Air Gnr

Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

Ward 10, Section F, Grave 46, Carlisle (Upperby) Cemetery, Carlisle, CUM

John Harold Henderson

26 February 1943

Pilot Officer (143404)

83rd Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

Panel 132, Runnymeade Cemetery, Surrey

(son of Matthew and Alice Henderson of Gilsland NBL; husband of Rhoda M. Henderson)

A FRONT

Fog over the base: the beams ranging
From the five towers pull home from the night
The crews cold in fur, the bombers banging
Like lost trucks down the levels of the ice.
A glow drifts in like mist (how many tons of it?),
Bounces to a roll, turns suddenly to steel
And tyres and turrets, huge in the trembling light.
The next is high, and pulls up with a wail,
Comes round again - no use. And no use for the rest
In drifting circles out along the range;
Holding no longer, changed to a kinder course,
The flights drone southward through the steady rain.
The base is closed...But one voice keeps on calling,
The lowering pattern of the engines grows;
The roar gropes downward in its shaky orbit
For the lives the season quenches. Here below
They beg, order, are not heard; and hear the darker
Voice rising: Can't you hear me? Over. Over -
All the air quivers, and the east sky glows.

~ Randall Jarrell ~

William Lawrence Robson

24 March 1945

Private (13063009)

84th Company, Pioneer Corps

VI. E. 3., Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery, Gelderland, Netherlands

(son of James and Annie Robson of Gilsland CUM)

HIGH FLIGHT

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high unsurpassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

~ Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee ~

Woodrow Raine

21 August 1941

Serjeant (Pilot) (754118)

610 Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

Plot 9 Row A Grave B, Longuenesse (St Omer) Souvenir Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France

(son of James Henry and Annie Raine of Greenhead CUM)

THE DEATH OF THE BALL TURRET GUNNER

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

~ Randall Jarrell ~

John Frederick Mounsey

9 August 1944

Private (3607648)

The Hallamshire Battalion, The York and Lancaster Regiment

Panel 17 Column 1, Bayeux Memorial, Calvados, France

(son of John William and Ursula Mounsey of Greenhead, Carlisle)

LOSSES

It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes-- and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,
We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.
(When we left high school nothing else had died
For us to figure we had died like.)
In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed
The ranges by the desert or the shore,
Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores--
And turned into replacements and woke up
One morning, over England, operational.
It wasn't different: but if we died
It was not an accident but a mistake
(But an easy one for anyone to make.)
We read our mail and counted up our missions--
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school--
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."
They said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.
It was not dying --no, not ever dying;
But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,
And the cities said to me: "Why are you dying?
We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?

~ Randall Jarrell ~

George Hector Sim

10 June 1943

Serjeant (1895107)

15 Bomb Disposal Company, Royal Engineers

Joint Grave 7. C. 5., Medjez-el-Bab War Cemetery, Tunisia

(son of James Alexander and Sadie Ann Sim; husband of Margaret Birkley Sim of Haltwhistle NBL)

THE LULLABY

For wars his life and half a world away
The soldier sells his family and days.
He learns to fight for freedom and the State;
He sleeps with seven men within six feet.

He picks up matches and he cleans out plates;
Is lied to like a child, cursed like a beast.
They crop his head, his dog tags ring like sheep
As his stiff limbs shift wearily to sleep.

Recalled in dreams or letters, else forgot,
His life is smothered like a grave, with dirt;
And his dull torment mottles like a fly's
The lying amber of the histories.

~ Randall Jarrell ~

Robert Robson

17 June 1943

Serjeant (1907388)

1018 Docks Operating Company, Royal Engineers

Panel 5. Column 1., Brookwood Memorial, Surrey

(Son of J. and of Sarah Jane Robson, of Slaggyford NBL)

"War is delightful to those who have not experienced it."

~ Erasmus ~

Robert Jobling Robson

17 December 1944

Lieutenant (219287)

11th Royal Tank Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps

X. 26. 32., Brussels Town Cemetery, Evere, Vlaams-Brabant, Belgium

(Son of Thomas and Annie Marguerite Robson, of Hexham NBL)

"The sole purpose of the cannon on the tank is to let the tank get into where it can use it's machine gun to kill the enemy."

~ General George S. Patton ~

Norman Ridley

21 January 1943

Sergeant (1018378)

158 Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

Panel 163., Runnymeade Memorial, Surrey

(Son of Alfred and Emily Ridley, of Hexham NBL)

“I've got to go to meet God - and explain all those men I killed at Alamein.”

~ Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery in 1976 ~

TOMMY

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o'beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's ``Thank you, Mister Atkins,'' when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's ``Thank you, Mr. Atkins,'' when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy how's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints:
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind,"
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

~ Rudyard Kipling ~