Great War Lives Lost

Vivian Pemberton grave

Captain Vivian Telfer Pemberton MC (Royal Garrison Artillery) is killed in action at age 24.  His brother was killed in December 1914.  He wrote the following poem called War Meditations.

When the snow lies crisp and sparkling o’re the frozen sea of mud

Which lies round Combles and Peronne;

When your veins are full of icicles instead of warm red blood

And your circulation’s absolutely gone;

When your fingers get so numb your glasses won’t stay near your eyes,

And your tired of watching movement in Bapaume,

Don’t you sometimes feel you’d like to have a really damned good cry,

When your thoughts begin to turn towards your home

When you’re passing Ginchy corner and the Hun begins to strafe,

And you want to throw yourself down in the mud,

But your daren’t because yo kow that the telephonist would laugh

So you can but hope the next will be a dud,

‘When you get to your O.P. and find you’ve worked your factors wrong.

And you’re well within the hundred per cent zone,

Have you never felt that feeling when your whole soul seems to long

For home, a dog, or wife to call your own.

Today’s losses include:

• A Great War Poet
• A Battalion commander
• Multiple sons of members of the clergy
• The son of an Alderman and Justice of the Peace
• Multiple families that will lose two sons in the Great War

Today’s highlighted casualties include:

• Major (Acting Lieutenant Colonel) Leonard Montague Greenwood DSO MC (commanding 13^th Durham Light Infantry) is killed at age 25. He is the son of the Reverend Thomas Greenwood.
• Captain Laurence Hilton Hopkins (Cambridgeshire Regiment) is killed at age 26. He is the son of the Reverend George Hanslip Hopkins Rector of Chigwell Row.
• Second Lieutenant Albert Lockwood (Royal Garrison Artillery) is killed at age 26. He is the son of Alderman H Lockwood JP.
• Bombardier Thomas George Herweg (1^st Australian Field Artillery) is killed at age 22. His brother died in Cairo in September 1915.