To My Comrades - 12th York and Lancasters

   I

 Bramall Lane, Bramall Lane,

  Days of sunshine, then of rain,

 Drill of squad or of platoon,

  Lunch in Sheffield town at noon;

 Lessons how to load and fire,

  Section rushes in the mire,

 How to fall back or advance,

  Zealous eager ignorance,

 Norfolk Park, Norfolk Park,

  Lights of Sheffield after dark,

 Homewards, wearied , on the car, -

  Days so infinitely far.

   II

 Redmires Camp on Roper's Hill,

  Broad expanse of grass for drill,

 Whip of rain and sweep of wind,

  Whirls of snow that sting and blind;

 Not for ease the programme set :

  Parry, point with bayonet,

 Firing, outposts, many a tramp,

  Day or night from Redmires Camp.

 Yet long evening hours we spent,

  Full of varied merriment,

 In our huts or when to town,

  Crowded taxis hastened down.  

  III

 Cannock Chase, Cannock Chase,

  One more summer - Heaven's grace,

 Marches in the mid-day heat,

  Field days 'mid the bracken sweet,

 Breadth of moor and depth of dell,

  Hills of Clee and Boscobel,

 Penkridge in the vale that lies,

  And the Wrekin's far-off rise,

 Farms beyond the heath where we

  Found a brief tranquillity;

 Lonely airy upland place,

  Cannock Chase, Cannock Chase,

   IV

 Ripon town, Ripon town,

  Soldiers passing up and down

 Every street, and loud with song

  Every inn and restaurant;

 Every day battalions seen

  Marching out to Wormold Green, -

 Ah, the fields have suffered change,

  Grass for kine on rifle-range;

 Many a mile of August gold,

  Woods that shelter as of old

 Fountains Abbey - Ripon town,

  Soldiers passing up and down.

   V

 Hurdcott Camp and once again

  Field-days on the wolds and then

 Lunch amid the gorse, the road

  Romans built to our abode;

 Or perchance a night attack,

  Up some silent grass-grown track;

 Leisure hours when we would walk

  Wishford way or by Broad Chalk,

 Far away the white cliffs clear

  And the forests of the deer.

 Were such days our life's decline

  Who among us could repine ?

  VI

 Plymouth Hoe, Plymouth Hoe,

  Biscay - crest on crest of snow,

 Breakers rolling everywhere,

  Longings for a foreign shore,

 Calm of land-encircled seas,

  Isles, a southern Hebrides,

 Sunshine day by day and ah !

  Dawn o'er hills of Africa;

 Burning of Egyptian sands,

  Labour hard on back and hands,

 Yet mayhap such toil may be

  Some day deemed felicity.

   VII

 Sudden orders - leave for France;

  Waves again and - happy chance ! -

 Glimpse at Provence hills before

  We entrain for - ask no more !

 Doubtless, days before us lie

  That will test us utterly:

 But of these the poet's pen

  Writeth not of now or then -

 Yet let us remember this -

  Some day comes the last "Dismiss",

 Some day we may shout, "No more

  Army life for us in store."

  VIII

 Ending strange. Abruptly sad.

  You who sang of outings glad !

 Speaks the poet truth or with

  Imagination makes he myth ?

 Nay, he doth idealise,

  Sees with beauty-searching eyes,

 Acts like Life whose handmaid Time

  Makes what was not seem sublime,

 Give us Memory's mirror where

  Is reflected what was fair -

 Thus within our souls inspires

  Courage for what Life requires.

                                   Alexander Robertson (1882-1916)

Alexander Robertson was born in Edinburgh on 12th January 1882.  His father became headmaster of Edinburgh Ladies College and he himself was educated at George Watson's College and Edinburgh University (M.A. First Class Honours in History, 1906).  He was the author of 'The Life of Sir Robert Moray' and also attended Oxford University (B.Litt., 1913) before moving to take up a post as Lecturer in History at the University of Sheffield, then a fledgling institution which had received its Royal Charter in 1905.

He can have spent little time in this job before enlisting as a Private in September 1914. It seems strange that he did not seek the commission which a man of his public school and university background might have expected.  It may also be incongruous that he was posted to 12th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment for this was the Sheffield City Battalion - "The Sheffield Pals".  It seems unlikely that he had made many friends during his short stay in the city, yet he was pitched in as a Jock among the tight-knit unit of men from the Steel City.

The poem 'To My Comrades' describes his military career. It begins with basic training in Sheffield.  Bramall Lane, famous as Sheffield United's football ground, was much larger in those days, regularly hosting Yorkshire cricket matches and its only Test Match in 1902. Norfolk Park was another open space within the city. Redmires, north-west of Sheffield on the edge of The Peak District,  was a good place for a training camp.

Cannock Chase in Staffordshire was a venue for further training, before a spell in the small North Yorkshire garrison city of Ripon.  Robertson's last posting before embarkation for the Mediterranean was Hurdcott Camp at the southern margin of Salisbury Plain. Though post- Vera Lynn generations might expect 'the white cliffs' in verse five to have some connection with Dover, the poet is just describing the chalk slopes near this Wiltshire training area. Two years after his spell here, other units cut giant replicas of their cap badges on the chalk slope at nearby Fovant.

Robertson sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in December 1915 as troops were needed in Egypt to counter a Turkish threat to the Suez Canal. This proved short lived and the 12th moved to France for training ahead of 1916's big push.

The poem always gives a sense of greater troubles ahead. One wonders if there is premonition at the start of the last verse :  'Ending strange.  Abruptly sad.'  Disaster caught up with ''The Sheffield Pals" and the rest of the British Army on 1st July 1916. The opening day of the Somme offensive was the bloodiest day in the history of both.  12th York and Lancasters were brigaded with the 13th and 14th, the two battalions of "Barnsley Pals".

The 12th drew a very short straw, an attack uphill on a well-defended position at Serre, which the artillery bombardment had failed to weaken.  One authority comments on the high number of bodies within the confines of the British wire. It says much for their training and spirit that the Pals managed to fight their way into the German front line, but by that time they had taken so many casualties that their attack could not possibly succeed.  

Robertson may have got further than most, for he was posted as 'missing in action' and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial for those with no known grave. At 34 he had become an Acting Corporal and would have been older than most of the men lost in this action.

'Soldiers Died in Great War', the roll of honour published at the end of the war shows that full extent of the tragedy for units such as the 12th.  It lost almost 260 dead in this action. Five neighbouring battalions in the line, including the Sheffields, both Barnsleys and the Accrington Pals each paraded fewer than 200 fit men the morning after the attack, so their composite strength was less than one battalion at full establishment.

The disaster everywhere along the front was compounded by the small recruitment areas of the 'Pals' battalions.  Three pairs of brothers were lost in the 12th.  Most of the 12th's dead were born in Sheffield, so most of the dreaded telegrams were delivered within the city, in Grenoside and Carbrook, in Darnall and Catcliffe, Hillsborough and Meersbrook.

The spirit of the Pals was such that they had difficulty accepting replacements from elsewhere as wounded men from other units were assigned to restore the numbers, but not the comradeship of the unit.     

This poem is what we might now call 'the title track' for a collection of fifteen poems, which were first published under the title 'Comrades' in October 1916.  There was a further selection 'Final Poems', but Robertson did not survive long enough in combat to write the more powerful poetry of the better-known war poets.  Even within his own battalion, his reputation is less than that of  Sgt. William Streets, also killed on the first day of the Somme, who seems to have written more prolifically.