TISBURY AND THE GREAT WAR
David Childs
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM
1916 was to be the year of two great battles, at sea at Jutland and
on the Western Front at the Somme but the focus of the New Year lay
elsewhere with the casualty free evacuation of Gallipoli being completed
on 8 January, thereby saving innumerable lives in this stalemate of
a conflict. Many of those evacuated would be shipped to Mesopotamia
where an almost as futile struggle was beginning. Further East the Turks
had a complete British army securely besieged at Kut, South of Baghdad,
with the January relief operation petering out in failure. At home January
saw the introduction of conscription for unmarried men between the ages
of 18 and 41 - how many hasty marriages resulted in this is not known.
POEM FOR JANUARY
Gallipoli produced its own verse, not as well known as that of the
Western Front but this sonnet by John William Street might serves as
a finale to that anthology. Street, a Sergeant in the Yorks & Lancs
Regiment had been sent out to Gallipoli and returned in time to take
part in the Somme attack, being reported missing on 1 July 1916, the
first day of that battle. His death was confirmed on 1 May 1917.
Gallipoli
Upon the margin of a rugged shore
There is a spot now barren, desolate,
A place of graves, sodden with human gore
That Time will hallow, Memory consecrate.
There lie the ashes of the mighty dead,
The youth who lit with flame Obscurity,
Fought true for Freedom, won thro' rain of lead
Undying fame, their immortality.
The stranger wand'ring when the war is over,
The ploughman there driving his coulter deep,
The husbandman who golden harvests reap-
From hill and ravine, from each plain and cover
Will hear a shout, see phantoms on the marge,
See men again making a deathless charge.