chapter FOUR

Rycharde Haythornthwaite, born in India but sent to England by his parents. Just three terms into his time at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Rycharde has signed up to join the East Kent Regiment, ‘The Buffs’, and after just a few months training, is sent to the frontline.

This narrative also tells you about the other notable events that were taking place at the time. (The quotes, descriptions, and references, are of the time and will reflect the culture and views of the early 20th century).

The Frontline
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After just a few weeks of facing the relentless enemy fire, Rycharde is shot during one of his many sorties he made to the frontline to help the wounded. He is also amongst the first to suffer the terror of chemical warfare, when chlorine gas is first used.

On 24 May, Rycharde is fatally wounded.

Sergeant Major W Dunlop of the 7th Durham Northumbrian Division wrote to Rycharde’s father:

“After a while, the counter attack started. Our troops advanced. What a sight, men falling right and left but still the advance continued until they reached our cottage. On several occasions your son went out and brought men in, it was on one of those that he got hit, the bullet passing through his left shoulder. I was dressing a chap with a finger blown off when it happened…he was as calm and cool as ever. He ordered a man to take everything out of his pockets, spectacles included, with the instructions “see these things are handed over to my family”.

If anyone ever died a soldier’s death, Lieutenant Haythornthwaite claims the honours of doing so.”

There are several letters from different people; soldiers who had served alongside him, those who were helped by him and the parents of soldiers who had died but received his care. Words including ‘gentle and kind’, ‘tenderly helping’ and ‘debt of gratitude’ are used conveying a message of the ultimate sacrifice made by Rycharde.

1915 was a montage of events representing the change in warfare that World War 1 symbolised when armed conflict took on a whole new horrific direction that led to international reform.

The Battle of Festubert 15-25 May 1915 on the Western Front when the British Expeditionary Forces suffered over 16,000 casualties was a turning point in the war. Military correspondent Colonel Repington wrote in The Times that the high number of deaths was due to shortages of artillery and other weaponry.

The public’s reaction led to the downfall of Asquith’s Liberal government.

However, it was not just the serious deficiencies that brought about change, it was the first time poisonous gas had been used on a large scale and the BEF were not equipped to deal with the deadly effect ‘keeps up a horrible choking feeling’. Chlorine gas was used to bombard the BEF on 22 May at Ypres.

Due to the nature of this weapon, the Geneva Protocol signed in 1925 prohibited the use of chemical and biological weapons in international armed conflicts.

Other memorable events include:
 The US House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote
 The first attack on Britain by the German Zeppelin airships
 The World’s Fair opens in San Francisco
 John McCrae, soldier and poet, writes ‘In Flanders Fields’

The Final Piece
The final piece to complete Rycharde’s life story will be found at the Menin Gate where his name is recorded alongside the thousands of other brave men and boys who gave their all. Rycharde’s body was
never found.

​I will always wonder why Rycharde wrote “English Essay” in each volume and if he ever managed to start his composition. World War 1 was meant to be the war to end all wars, but as we now know that was a pipedream as the human race continues to show it is incapable of living peacefully; wars will never end, only the face of war changes.

“If one of us goes under, think what a glorious end it is” 

On Tapioca (a poem written by Rycharde during his school days)

(Lines inspired on tasting for the first time a plate of college tapioca and jam)

The works of poets often have I read
In vain endeavour rightly to find out
The meaning of this life; but yet I doubt
If any fan-famed poet e’er was bred
On college tapioca; or, so fed,
He must have learnt what now I am about
Sagely to expound; namely, that throughout
Our earthly lives we may be truly said
To recall a plate of tapioca:
We are the little lumps that disappear
So quickly ‘tween the yawning jaws of death
Forgotten, but digested; life’s joys are
The college jam with which one tries to stear
One’s little lump – though one often findeth
That the jam offendeth;*
And life’s hard things, what are they but the stones
In which (and this for all our pain atones)
A little kernel roams?
So reader, if a simile you need
To college puddings pay a gentle heed.
(*as doth the rhyme!)
 
Rycharde Meade Haythornthwaite born 4 January 1894 died 25 May 1915

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