Morning sun silvered the poplar leaves

Somewhere others lay in the cut clay, waiting 

And I smelt the sea’s dead things

As I walked. 

Kelp, razor shells, crabs, limpets

 

We laughed and swam in sandy craters

And I walked

By Goat's Water, the Old Man looked down

As he had for all my life 

And all those other lives before

The smell of wet bracken, sphagnum, washed slate

The thunder of machines in the quarry,

Blown rock crushing against rock 

Gazing out to Bardsea

The bay, silted and sinuous with soft sand 

And the smell of a gentle, smiling girl

whose fingers flickered in mine

As we walked

Mother’s scones, hot from the black oven

Father’s pipe tap-tapping on the mantelpiece

The heat of it in my hand

All this I saw and felt and smelt

And loved

As I walked 

Into the light.

 

*******

This poem is inspired by the story of my Great Uncle — Lance Corporal Frank Porter of the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, who died aged 26 on July 1st 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. I only found out about him after reading my Uncle Arthur’s autobiography, published in 2008, so for most of my life he was an absence. I have researched him since and visited the exact place at Serre in Picardy, where he and his comrades fell. He has no grave but his name is inscribed on the Thiepval Monument and Ulverston War Memorial in Lancashire. The places mentioned in the poem are all places he would have known well, growing up in Ulverston, two miles from the coastal village of Bardsea and 14 miles from the peak of Coniston Old Man.

The remains of an unknown soldier of his battalion were found in 2003 and buried with full honours. Frank is one of seventy five soldiers whose remains they might have been. I always think about him on Remembrance Day, and wonder about the life he had and the terrible dread and loss experienced by the family at 26, Clarence St, Ulverston. At 8.46am The soldiers of his platoon went ‘over the top’ from their trenches and walked into a relentless fusillade of machine gun and artillery fire.

News of his death came in a letter by Pte F. Martindale, №1933, who served alongside him in 1 st Platoon of “A” Company.

It was published in the Barrow News on Saturday July 22 which noted:

“He was well liked by all in the company and by his death we have lost a good comrade.

“He died doing his duty — leading his section in action and I can assure you he got a good name and a proper burial.

“The platoon and myself share our sympathy with you in your sad bereavement.”

****

This morning I re-read Siegfried Sasson's poem: "Attack" :

 

Attack

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun 

In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun, 

Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud 

The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, 

Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. 

The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed 

With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear, 

Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. 

Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, 

They leave their trenches, going over the top, 

While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, 

And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, 

Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!