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borderroamerhttps://fisherbelfast.wordpress.comThe Northern Standard, Monaghan. Reporter.
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ERIC POOLE: SHOT AT POPERINGE JAIL

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Family photo of Eric Poole (centre)

Eric Poole, aged 31. Second Lieutenant in the 11th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment. Admitted to hospital with shell shock in July 1916 (around the time of the Battle of the Somme). Despite his panic attacks he is sent back to the Front.

On 5th October 1916 Poole’s platoon arrives at the Front Line near Flers in France. However the 2nd Lt has disappeared. Poole is arrested days later and sentenced to death for desertion. He is the first officer in the British Army to be actually executed.

Cell in Poperinge jail with graffiti by soldiers

Cell in Poperinge jail with graffiti by soldiers

The execution took place on December 10th 1916 at 7.25am at Poperinge jail. Shot at Dawn.

Looking out into the courtyard from the prison cell

SHOT AT DAWN

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Memorial at Poperinge for soldiers sentenced to death

It was a poignant moment on the fifth and final day of our tour of Flanders when we went to Poperinge a few miles from Ieper. In a courtyard there is a metal post that now serves as a memorial to soldiers killed there for breaking military law.

Several years ago a former President of the National Union of Journalists George McIntyre led a campaign to clear the names of WWI British soldiers court martialled e.g. for desertion and shot at dawn by a firing squad.

Information board

TOC-H SERVICE

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During our visit to the chapel or Upper Room in TOC-H Poperinge, we paused for a brief prayer service. It was led by one of our visiting group, Church of Ireland Canon Andrea Wills from Foxford, Co. Mayo.This was very appropriate as the chapel was created by the founder of Talbot House, Reverend Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton, a Church of England minister from England.Canon Wills led us in prayers including the Lord’s Prayer, to remember all those soldiers who gave their lives in World War One, some of them Irishmen serving in the British Army.

TOC-H UPPER ROOM

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Chapel at Talbot House, Poperinge

Climbing almost heavenwards up a flight of steep and narrow wooden stairs you reach the upper room at Talbot House. This was used as a chapel by the founder and chaplain Reverend Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton.

Altar in the chapel at TOC-H Poperinge

This is where Anglican services would be held for the troops during World War One.

Talbot House Upper Room

There was a prayerful and reverent atmosphere amidst all the reminders that this is where soldiers would have gone for some spiritual comfort during the long days of conflict in the battles in Flanders.

Memorial Cross in Talbot House

Crucifix in the Upper Room at Talbot House

Wooden frieze of The Last Supper

Memorial Cross in Chapel at Talbot House

View of Upper room from the altar

Pray for the souls of the gallant dead

TOC-H FOUNDER

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Picture of Revd Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton in Talbot House

Mark K. Smith (2004) has written about the founder of TOC-H, Army padre Reverend Philip Clayton. See: Smith, M. K. (2004) ‘Philip “Tubby” Clayton and TocH’, the encyclopedia of informal education.

Revd. Philip (Tubby) Clayton and Toc H

Army Chaplains Neville Talbot (left) and Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton opened a club for soldiers in the heart of Poperinge in December 1915. For more than three years, Talbot House provided rest and recreation to all soldiers entering, regardless of rank.

Remembering those souls who have died

Philip Thomas Byard Clayton (1885-1972), Philip Thomas Byard Clayton (1885-1972) was known to his friends as Tubby. He was born on December 12th 1885 in Queensland. At the age of two his parents returned to England. Educated at St Paul’s School in London and then at Exeter College, Oxford, he gained a First Class Degree in Theology. While reading for orders under the Dean of Westminster he became involved with the boys’ club work of the Oxford Medical Mission in Bermondsey.

John Stansfeld (‘The Doctor’), the founder of the Mission, had, according to Philip Clayton, ‘passed like the Pied Piper, through the ‘Varsity and bidden us to the boys’ clubs at Dockhead, Gordon and Decima’ (quoted by Baron 1952: 206). He worked there one night a week, joining a remarkable group of workers that included Alec Paterson and Barclay ‘Barkis’ Baron (who was later to join the central staff of Toc H and edit the Toc H magazine).

TOC-H POPERINGE

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Talbot House, Poperinge

TOC-H (TH) is an international Christian movement. The name is an abbreviation for Talbot House, ‘Toc’ signifying the letter T in the Signals spelling alphabet used by the British Army in World War I.

Front door of Talbot House, Poperinge

A soldiers’ rest and recreation centre named Talbot House was founded in December 1915 at Poperinge in Belgium. It aimed to promote Christianity and was named in memory of Gilbert Talbot, son of Edward Talbot, then Bishop of Winchester, who had been killed at Hooge in July 1915.

Room in Talbot House

The founders were Gilbert’s elder brother, Neville Talbot, then a senior army chaplain, and the Reverend Philip Thomas Byard (Tubby) Clayton.

Talbot House

Talbot House was styled as an “Every Man’s Club”, where all soldiers were welcome, regardless of rank. It was “an alternative for the ‘debauched’ recreational life of the town”.

Entrance to Chaplain’s Room

In 1920, Clayton founded a Christian youth centre in London, also called Toc H, which developed into an interdenominational association for Christian social service.

The original building at Poperinghe has been maintained and redeveloped as a museum and tourist venue.

Map of WWI Battlefield around Ypres in Flanders

Branches of Toc H were established in many countries around the world. An Australian branch was formed in Victoria in 1925 by the heretical Reverend Herbert Hayes. Another was formed in Adelaide the same year.

Caption for WWI Map

Toc H members seek to ease the burdens of others through acts of service. They also promote reconciliation and work to bring disparate sections of society together. Branches may organise localised activities such as hospital visits, entertainment for the residents of care homes and organising residential holidays for special groups.

Our group arrives at Talbot House, Poperinge

POPERINGE

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Poperinge war memorial

Poperinge or simply ‘Pop’ as the Tommies referred to it is a village about eight miles west of Ieper in West Flanders. The region is famous for growing hops.

Sint Bertinuskerk tower with carillon

During World War One the town was one of only two in Belgium not under German occupation. It was used to billet British troops and also provided a safe area for field hospitals. Known familiarly as “Pop”, it was just behind the front line and formed an important link for the soldiers and their families, especially through the rest house known as Talbot House (or “Toc-H“). A grim reminder of that time remains within the town hall, where two death cells are preserved, and outside in the courtyard, where there is a public execution post used by firing squads.

Another reminder is the location of a number of military cemeteries on the outskirts of the town with the graves of Canadian, British, Australian, French, German, US servicemen and men of the Chinese Labour Corps. One of these is Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery for soldiers who had been wounded near Ypres and later died in the large Allied casualty clearing stations located in the area.

Ginger sculpture in Market Square Poperinge

A new statue on the market place brings Eliane Cossey or “Ginger” back to Poperinge. Ginger was a red haired girl that worked at the La Poupée café and had a mesmerising effect on many soldiers. An initiative that bring “Little Paris” back to life.

Poperinge Town Hall

Willie Redmond MP wrote in his war diary about Ginger’s: “A cheery spot it is, bedecked with the flags of the Allied nations. All the appointments of the place ara good: clean cloths upon the little tea-tables, little bunches of flowers here and there, and altogether an air of brightness and comfort about. Very grateful indeed to eyes weary of the drab dismalness of trench and hut. In the hours of the afternoon the tea-room is crowded with officers from various units, and it is of interest to observe that they represent very often branches of the army in the field from almost every corner of the Empire.“

ALL THE FINE YOUNG MEN

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Turning back to the huge Tyne Cot CWGC memorial. My friend Noeleen Berry from Dublin went there on a similar visit to mine in April this year. She immediately thought of Mary Black’s version of the Eric Bogle song ‘All the Fine Young Men’ and this video is the result. The song starts a few seconds into the video.

ALL THE FINE YOUNG MEN

Eric Bogle / Munro
They told all the fine young men,
“Ah, when this war is over,
There will be peace,
And the peace will last forever.”
In Flanders Fields,
At Lone Pine and Bersheeba,
For king and country,
Honour and for duty,
The young men fought and cursed and wept and died.They told all the fine young men,
“Ah, when this war is over,
In your country’s grateful heart
We will cherish you forever.”
Tobruk and Alamein,
Bhuna and Kokoda,
In a world mad with war,
Like their fathers before,
The young men fought and cursed and wept and died.For many of those fine young men
All the wars are over,
They’ve found their peace,
It’s the peace that lasts forever.
When the call comes again,
They will not answer,
They’re just forgotten bones,
Lying far from their homes,
Forgotten as the cause for which they died.
Ah, Bluey, can you see now why they lied?

MONAGHAN ARMY MEMORIAL

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Defence Forces memorial at the former Monaghan military barracks site

Corporal Ernie Carter was like myself a Dubliner who lived in Tydavnet. He was one of the original members of the 29th Infantry Battalion Association in Monaghan.

One of the wreaths from the 29th Infantry Battalion Association

One of his tasks as Secretary of the Association was to help organise a memorial stone at the site of the former military barracks (now the education campus) beside the Garage Theatre on the Armagh Road.

Colour party at the memorial stone

He died in June last year. The third annual commemoration took place this afternoon, with prayers led by a former army chaplain from Co. Cavan. I was asked to read out the poem for veterans ‘A Soldier’.

Michael Fisher reads the poem ‘A Soldier’. Pic. © Denis Barry

There were 79 names of the deceased listed on a framed sheet beside the memorial. They were soldiers who served in Dún Uí Neill Cavan, the Tanagh outpost in Cootehill and the barracks in Monaghan. We will remember them. REST IN PEACE.

The names of the deceased from 29th Infantry Battalion

Paying respect to deceased members of the 29th Infantry Battalion

Standing to attention during the ceremony

One of the wreaths laid by Denis Barry

Paying respect at the memorial stone