This picture was taken a month before he was called up under the Derby scheme of enlistment in mid 1917 in June. He left his daughter barely a month old and his wife Tabitha, to go to the Black Watch training centre, where his special skill of speaking German was sought after in the later part of the war. Within 3 weeks he found himself close to the Messine Ridge in Ypres and soon enough he was plunged into the worst battle of the war - Passchendaele. This battle became famous because it's casualties amounted to 500,000 from a new weapon, Mustard Gas, which combined with the unfortunate conditions in the trenches of dangerous water filled, flows of mud the men toppled into the ground creating horrific mass graves. The use of Mustard gas was to become it's first and last achievement in that when the top brass realised that it was causing multiple deaths in a grossly inhumane and 'inefficient' way, its was banned soon after as a weapon of war.
John's war was not to last long because although he got to the end of Passchandaele he received Mustard Gas poisoning which meant he had lung erosion that was to trouble him for the rest of his life. When Passchendaele ended on the 10th November 2017 John was making his way to the field hospital in Ypres, where it was decided he must return home to become one of thousands of men who could not return to the battlefield. In the UK he woke up in hospital a month later hearing carol singers at Christmas time. Awaking from unconsciousness, he thought he had died and gone to heaven, when hearing the notes of the music that had brought him round.
It would take a while before he would realise that he was at Craiglockhart hospital a special place for soldiers with the newly coined term 'shell shock' though John was also dealing with the effects of Mustard gas. There the hospital had a regime to give soldiers rehabilitation therapy by doing tasks and jobs which might distract them from the thoughts of the battle scenes they had witnessed. The hospital was the place where the poet's Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon were available to other soldiers to help show them see the benefits of poetry as a means of dealing with shell shock. John was to take up poetry himself while also participating in the occupational therapy of needlework a job that was familiar to him because he was a professional tailor before the war. In the picture above his is on the right front seated but the Black Watch badge he made is being held by another wounded soldier.
John did not return to the action of the war , but he was to write poetry, which was published in local newspapers in Fife, Scotland, under the pen name SARTOR, which means tailor in Latin. Below is one of his poems called Storm and War which was published in 1953 after his time in World War Two serving again in the Black Watch.
Storm
and War
Storm
All
day, all night, along the storm-swept shore,
The
gale, blind giant astride the waves, drives hard,
They
madly gallop and crash with thundering roar,
To
spumy fragments rent -such is their reward-
Tis
nature's law alone that they hold in regard.
White
birds on tense wings above the chaos ride,
Flying,
unresting as the wild gale raves.
Seeing
destruction scattered far and wide,
When
seaweed and silken tresses the storm laves:
Unwitting
they scar, glide,wheel, o'er unsought graves.
War
All
day, all night, along earth's war swept coasts,
War,
grim tyrant, astride the nations, drives them hard,
And
they assenting, crash midst thundering hosts,
To
gory fragments rent - such is their reward -
Lured
on by wealth and power, vain, illusive ghosts.
White
love on strong wings above war's chaos glides,
Yearns,
unresting, questing for the peace of home,
Longs
to stop destruction ranging far and wide
O'er
all earth's coasts and oceans embattled foam:
Waiting,
oh Man, to make they errant heart her home.
'Leven
Mail' (East Fife Mail) 25th Feb 1953 SAR TOR
Finally I hope to complete the documentary for a Christmas screening which seems appropriate because he woke up at Christmas time after being unconscious on his travel back home. It is not too late to contribute to the Go Fund Me, which has no deadlines in its scheme. The money raised so far will go on a student editor for one week. As a contributor you will get a Producer credit, a copy of the film on DVD and small booklet of John's story containing some of his poems. You can donate by going to the link on the word here
No comments:
Post a Comment