A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad — Context and Discussion

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In Category - Fantasy Juvenile Worlds

Authors: Harvey, F. W. (Frederick William), 1888-1957 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2021 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: World War, 1914-1918 -- Poetry; Gloucestershire (England) -- Poetry Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 10,408

Reading time 46 min

Text sections 51

The source record for A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad — Context and Discussion measures this digital text at 10,408 words, 46 min estimated reading time, and 51 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 18.7 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “World War, 1914-1918 -- Poetry,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #66108

F. W. Harvey's 1916 collection, written while serving as a lance-corporal in the Gloucestershire Regiment, juxtaposes trench-life sketches with nostalgic Gloucestershire poems. The preface notes that 'mud, blood and khaki are rather conspicuously absent,' focusing instead on home and comrades. Excerpts reveal a blend of humor, elegy, and literary parody, with poems like 'Sergeant Finch' and 'Epitaph (T. D., 13/3/16)' showing distinct voices.

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File: pg66108

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A Gloucestershire Lad

A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad

London Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd. 1917

_First Impression, September 1916._ _Second Impression, October 1916._ _Third Impression, January 1917._ _Fourth Impression, March 1917._

_All rights reserved._

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

Most of these poems were written at the Front, and appeared in the _Fifth Gloucester Gazette_--the first paper ever published from the trenches.

The author was then a Lance-Corporal in the 5th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment, and as such gained the Distinguished Conduct Medal in August, 1915.

The award appears as follows in the _London Gazette_--

F. W. HARVEY.--“For conspicuous gallantry on the night of the 3rd-4th August, 1915, near Hebuterne, when, with a patrol, he and another Non-Commissioned Officer went out to reconnoitre in the direction of a suspected listening post. In advancing they encountered the hostile post evidently covering a working party in the rear. Corporal Knight at once shot one of the enemy, and, with Lance-Corporal Harvey, rushed the post, shooting two others, and assistance arriving the enemy fled. Lance-Corporal Harvey pursued, felling one of the retreating Germans with a bludgeon. He seized him, but finding his revolver empty and the enemy having opened fire, he was called back by Corporal Knight, and the prisoner escaped. Three Germans were killed and their rifles and a Mauser pistol were brought in. The patrol had no loss.”

The poems are written by a soldier and reflect a soldier’s outlook. Mud, blood and khaki are rather conspicuously absent. They are, in fact, the last things a soldier wishes to think or talk about.

What he does think of is his home.

Bishop Frodsham, preaching in Gloucester Cathedral, after visiting the Troops in France, quoted the following poem in a passage which admirably expresses the feelings of most of our fighting men.

“To suppose that these men enjoy the fighting would be sheer nonsense. The soldier does not want to go on killing and maiming Germans or Turks. He wants to get the dreadful war finished, so that he can get back to England again. But he wants the matter fought to a finish because he has seen in the villages and towns of France what German domination means. It has made him think furiously, as the French say. Many regiments and ships’ companies while away the impracticable hours by publishing little newspapers.

“The _Fifth Gloucester Gazette_ is one of these journals. We are proud of the courage and the gaiety these little papers show. We laugh at their quips and jokes: then suddenly we find that the corners of our mouths are quivering and the tears are gathering in our eyes. We see that the boys are thinking about England below their gaiety. One young poet lifts the veil in this exquisite little rondeau--

“‘If we return, will England be Just England still to you and me-- The place where we must earn our bread? We who have walked among the dead, And watched the smile of agony, And seen the price of liberty, Which we have taken carelessly From other hands. Nay, we shall dread: If we return, Dread lest we hold blood-guiltily The thing that men have died to free. Our English fields shall blossom red In all the blood that has been shed, By men whose guardians are we, If we return.’”

That is perhaps the keynote of a book which the author has dedicated to all dead and living comrades who have loved England.

J. H. COLLETT, C.M.G., COLONEL

Commanding the Fifth Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment in France.

PREFACE BY COLONEL J. H. COLLETT, C.M.G. vii

A SONG OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 1

BALLADE OF THE RICH HEART 3

SONG OF MINSTERWORTH PERRY 5

A GLOUCESTERSHIRE WISH AT EASTERTIDE 6

BALLADE OF RIVER SAILING 9

SONG OF MINSTERWORTH 11

CRICKET: THE CATCH 13

BALLADE OF DAMNABLE THINGS 19

THE SOLDIER SPEAKS 23

A PRESENT FROM FLANDERS 24

LAND OF HEART’S DELIGHT 29

BALLADE OF BEELZEBUB, GOD OF FLIES 32

ROBERT HERRICK SOLILOQUIZES ON THE C.O. 36

WALT WHITMAN DESCRIBES MAJOR W. 38

THE FIRST SPRING DAY 43

THE ORCHARDS, THE SEA, AND THE GUNS 46

DEATH THE REVEALER 49

4. THE WINDOW GLASS 55

5. IN THE FIELD OF TIME 56

11. TIME--THE HORSE 62

12. THE REBUILDING OF REALITY 63

_I’m homesick for my hills again-- My hills again! To see above the Severn plain Unscabbarded against the sky The blue high blade of Cotswold lie; The giant clouds go royally By jagged Malvern with a train Of shadows. Where the land is low Like a huge imprisoning O I hear a heart that’s sound and high, I hear the heart within me cry: “I’m homesick for my hills again-- My hills again! Cotswold or Malvern, sun or rain! My hills again!”_

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The preface to A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad declares that these poems, mostly written at the Front and first published in the Fifth Gloucester Gazette, deliberately avoid 'mud, blood and khaki.' Instead, they reflect what a soldier 'does think of'—home. This orientation is crucial: the collection is not a chronicle of battle but a record of mental escape and camaraderie. The opening poems, such as 'Sergeant Finch' and 'C Company Cook,' establish a tone of affectionate, often humorous observation, grounded in specific details like 'the way that his puttees are wound' or a stammered 'Do you want j-jam on it?'

Comrades in Verse

The middle excerpts introduce a gallery of named and unnamed figures, each rendered with a distinct verbal tic or physical trait. 'Sergeant Finch' is 'blue-eyed, debonair, with a hat / Cocked sideways the eighth of an inch,' while the cook's stammer becomes a refrain. These portraits are not sentimental; they rely on precise, almost documentary detail. The acrostic 'The Three Padres' further shows Harvey’s range, moving from a 'pale-faced, brown-eyed, slight' R.C. chaplain to a Wesleyan 'envied for smiles.' The poems function as a verbal roll-call, preserving personalities through rhythm and rhyme.

Literary Echoes in the Trenches

Harvey frequently borrows and parodies established poetic voices. 'Robert Herrick Soliloquizes on the C.O.' adapts Herrick’s 'Delight in Disorder' to mock a commanding officer’s obsession with neat puttees. 'Walt Whitman Describes Major W.' captures Whitman’s cataloguing style—'Nonchalantly he stands / On every step of life / Tapping his legging'—to frame a modern officer. These intertextual games are not mere decoration; they place the soldier-poet within a literary tradition, using familiar meters to domesticate the alien environment of war.

Elegy Understated

Alongside the humor, several poems confront loss with restraint. 'Epitaph (T. D., 13/3/16)' uses a trench’s shallowness as a metaphor: 'A shallow trench for one so tall!' The dead soldier’s soul 'sits safe with God' above the 'wind and wet.' 'Sonnet (To H. M.)' imagines the deceased 'borne to the utter quietness far flung / Of fields Elysian where the horrid tongue / Of battle is not.' These elegies avoid explicit horror, focusing instead on the contrast between earthly suffering and imagined peace. The language is formal, almost archaic, yet the grief is personal.

Home as Counterweight

The collection’s title promises a balance between 'at home and abroad,' and the excerpts hint at how Gloucestershire functions as a mental refuge. The preface quotes Bishop Frodsham’s sermon, emphasizing that soldiers long 'to get back to England again.' While the provided excerpts include few home poems, the contrast is structural: the trench portraits are vivid but the emotional center lies elsewhere. Readers should note how the domestic poems, when encountered, provide a counterpoint to the military sketches, completing the diptych implied by the title.

Reading this collection sequentially reveals a deliberate alternation between observation and memory, humor and elegy. Harvey’s preface warns against expecting graphic war poetry; instead, the poems offer a soldier’s interior landscape. Pay attention to shifts in tone and form—from parody to sonnet to epitaph—as markers of how the poet navigates his dual role as combatant and artist. The result is a record not of battles but of the mind’s strategies for endurance.

There’s something about Harvey finding home in the mud, stubbornly refusing to let the trenches have the last word. It makes me think of that quieter volume, A Christmas snowflake: a rhyme for children — Context and Discussion, which feels like the same impulse turned toward gentleness. A small, private season held close. I remember that, somehow.