A Gloucestershire Lad
A
Gloucestershire Lad
at Home and Abroad
by
F. W. Harvey
Fourth Impression
London
Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.
1917
TO
ALL COMRADES OF MINE
WHO LIE DEAD IN FOREIGN FIELDS
FOR LOVE OF ENGLAND,
OR WHO LIVE TO PROSECUTE THE WAR
FOR ANOTHER ENGLAND
PREFACE
Most of these poems were written at the Front,and appeared in the Fifth Gloucester Gazette—thefirst paper ever published from the trenches.
The author was then a Lance-Corporal in the5th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment,and as such gained the Distinguished ConductMedal in August, 1915.
The award appears as follows in the LondonGazette—
F. W. Harvey.—“For conspicuous gallantry onthe night of the 3rd-4th August, 1915, nearHebuterne, when, with a patrol, he and anotherNon-Commissioned Officer went out to reconnoitrein the direction of a suspected listening post.In advancing they encountered the hostile postevidently covering a working party in the rear.Corporal Knight at once shot one of the enemy,and, with Lance-Corporal Harvey, rushed thepost, shooting two others, and assistance arrivingthe enemy fled. Lance-Corporal Harveypursued, felling one of the retreating Germanswith a bludgeon. He seized him, but findinghis revolver empty and the enemy havingopened fire, he was called back by CorporalKnight, and the prisoner escaped. Three Germanswere killed and their rifles and a Mauserpistol were brought in. The patrol had noloss.”
[viii]The poems are written by a soldier and reflecta soldier’s outlook. Mud, blood and khaki arerather conspicuously absent. They are, in fact,the last things a soldier wishes to think or talkabout.
What he does think of is his home.
Bishop Frodsham, preaching in GloucesterCathedral, after visiting the Troops in France,quoted the following poem in a passage whichadmirably expresses the feelings of most of ourfighting men.
“To suppose that these men enjoy the fightingwould be sheer nonsense. The soldier does notwant to go on killing and maiming Germans orTurks. He wants to get