Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

It's that time of year when I look through the many letters, verses etc that I have been collecting over the last seven years and try and choose one. This year I have picked a verse that I will be showing to the Liverpool Group on Tuesday. Penned by Lance-Corporal P. F. Clements Royal Irish Regiment

Dear Mother,
I must tell you of the life I’m living here.
Tis the queerest sort of life I’ve ever led:
There are many little moments that I sit and think of home.
And other moments when I think I am dead.
When the aeroplanes stop buzzing, the shells quit whistling tunes.
And I hear the singing of the lark.
Pon my word, it reminds me of the peaceful afternoons that I’ve often spent in dear old Sefton Park.

I am living near a village where the Boches biggest gun has battered all the buildings in the place.
The church’s alterations have been greatly overdone.
The public house is lying– its face.
The doors, walls, and window frames have wandered wide and far.
They’ll take a lot of finding-sure they will!
When the landlord or the agent comes to find where they are
I hope to be back at dear old Mossley Hill.

Though some may live in houses or in glorious chateaus.
The likes of them would never cross my mind:
I scorn there lofty battlements and wide extensive views.
And take the lowliest dwelling I can find.
Tis but a little “Dug out” and I pay no rent or toll.
And I go in when the shells begin to roam.
I light a little fire and sit down and think-
They are the moments when I think of home.

Now if there’s any chaps who are slow to join the fun.
And are propping up the corners of the street.
Just ask em what they’ll do when everything is done.
And all their old companions they will greet:
For we’ll have all the glories, the stories, and the news.
And get a smile of welcome from everyone we meet.

I could write a little longer letter, but the time is drawing near.
As for sleep my head is beginning to sink.
So I’ll close this one at present in the hopes that mother dear.
It will find you as it leaves me- in the pink.
So don’t be lonely mother! I’ll be coming home again.
In a month-a year-or p’haps not at all:
But when I do come home into my little bed I’ll get.
And for a week at least mother, you must not call!


Percival Foster Clement born 1894. His birth was registered Toxteth Park.

Percy did come home, got married in 1920 and had four children and died in 1948


LEST WE FORGET

KFD99 (c)11th November 2012

What a lovely read. Thank you Katie.

Onya Percy!
No idea when this was posted, but I've just read it. Lovely.

Wendy

It is lovely, poignant. Thank you for finding it again, Wendy - and Katie, for posting it in the first place on Remembrance Day.

My grandad was in the South Lancs Regiment during WWI. He lied about his age to join up; he was only fifteen. I suppose it seemed all very exciting, the chance to travel abroad - escaping the drudgery of the Wireworks.

He found himself, no more than a kid, witnessing first-hand the horrors of Ypres. The only one left alive in a filthy trench, bodies broken and strewn all around him. He knew that if he moved a sniper would be sure to see him, so he lay there all day long underneath the guns with the battle raging all around him. At one point he felt something in the wet mud close by his hand, and fixed his fingers around it. It was a little, battered, black Bible. He held onto it. Darkness fell, and at some point he managed to scramble out of the trench and make it back to safety.

Grandad, like the gentleman above, survived the War. He died in 1981. He kept the little black Bible with him, always. There is a name in it, and an address in Scotland. On his return home after the war, Grandad wrote a letter and sent it to the address. He heard nothing back.

Thank you. I'm not a Military Historian I am just a Historian Family/Local.Social. I like collecting verses and letters sent home by the soldiers at the Front as its about telling their story, sometimes the letters and verses are humorous, sometimes sad. You mention the Wire Works? is your Dad from the Prescot area. What was his name?

Grandad William Stott. There were a lot of Stotts in Prescot. That side of my family is very big. Grandad was such a quiet and gentle man, but those experiences in the trenches must've changed him. It was such a terrible war.

To me, names and dates are secondary to finding out how people lived/what they did - a few scribbled lines on the back of an old postcard at an antiques fayre, a forgotten inscription in a book, and I'm away. I spend hours reading about strangers' lives, other people's families - and completely forget I'm meant to be researching my own family history.