WILLIAM ALEXANDER STANHOPE FORBES, FROM PAUL, CORNWALL: TWO POEMS & IMAGES FROM SANCREED...

Gallant…

Although declared ‘unfit to fight’,

A 2nd Lieutenant, his adrenalin lusting,

Hovered silent, his platoon restless, trusting;

The whistle was awaited for the advance on Guillemont:

Determined, something to prove for the officer contrite.

A German barrage fell, to accompany the machine-gunners’ might,

As Forbes led his men from their trench, avoiding the chaos of barbed wire;

Just a few days in France and now the Boche were in sight;

Selfless, relentless, pushing on, thrusting,

Past the dead, the dying and putrefaction,

He was certainly ‘gallant’

And valiant,

Yet quickly, 

Randomly,

Killed

In action…   

Pete Ray

July 2019

William Alexander (Alec) Stanhope Forbes was born in 1893 and lived at Higher Faugan, Paul, near Mousehole, Cornwall.

He was the only child of the famous artists Stanhope Alexander Forbes (a founding member of the Newlyn School of painters) and his Canadian wife Elizabeth.

ALEC, PAINTED BY HIS MOTHER, DURING A HOLIDAY FROM BEDALES SCHOOL.
5 OF THE 12 STARTERS AT THAT SCHOOL IN SEPTEMBER 1906 WERE KILLED IN WW1...

She had died in 1912 and his father hadn’t wanted his son to ‘join up’ during the First World War but Alec would be turned down anyway by the military, his slight build rendering him ‘unfit to fight’.

He sought a commission though through the support of an uncle, who was a manager at the Brighton and South Coast Railway, thus Alec obtained a commission on April 25th, 1915.

He was a Forwarding Officer in the Railway Transport Corps but he soon transferred to the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry in September 1915.

He was a member of the 3rd Battalion at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight but again managed to transfer, this time to the 1st Battalion, around August 1916.

On the Somme battlefield he found himself up the line on the 3rd of September and ready for an attack on Guillemont and despite the German artillery and machine-gun fire all around them, the Cornwalls moved forward steadily.

Forbes was dead within fifty minutes…

Memorial…

A carved wooden cross marked where Forbes had fallen

At the Somme and although the enemy would capture that ground,

The memorial survived the carnage, the detritus, the destruction

And was eventually, miraculously found…

Pete Ray

July 2019

The wooden marker sits now in Sancreed Church, Cornwall.

A remarkable memorial to Alec is also inside the church…

I had visited Sancreed Church to look at the grave of another famous painter’s unfortunate first wife: Florence Carter-Wood, nicknamed ‘Blote’, who would take her own life… 

Little did I know that the church would contain the memorials to young Alec Forbes, who had seemed so desperate to be in the war, escape the sadness caused by a recently deceased mother, to shrug off his father’s wishes and of course to prove the military wrong, knowing in his own mind he truly was ‘fit to fight’…

Another life was thus senselessly squandered…