The link above takes you to transcripts of the coroner's report, 1916.
Please read below as well ... this is an astonishing story from WW1
'My beloved fiancée, Dorothy Beard, aged 18, of Burleigh,
Brimscombe, and I, Archibald Clutterbuck Knee, aged 25, of West End,
Minchinhampton, being both of sound mind, are writing this, our last will and
testament together, this night of August 27th, 1916.
You, who are reading this note, have just found it lodged
beneath my cap, and Dorothy’s hat and umbrella in the reeds by the side of Iron
Gates Pond, Longfords Lake, Longfords Mill, Avening. You will see our bodies in
the water. We hope there is no wind or rain tonight which might erase our words
or blow our letters beneath the waters.
I, Dorothy Beard, have
worked as a weaver at Evans and Sons in Brimscombe since school. Archie has
courted me these last three years. We are engaged to be married but shall go to
Heaven hand in hand as all but husband and wife. Our watery grave is but a
passage to another world free from pain and suffering. We shall be at peace
there.
I used to be a weaver too, until I volunteered for the army
on June 14th, 1916. That was only some two months ago but it feels
like a lifetime. I am now Private Knee, number 29386, 15th
Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment. Or I shall be for a few minutes longer.
I came home on leave about five days ago after an attack of
German measles and now my nerves are bad again. They come and go but I fear
they are here to stay. I can’t face going back to camp at Chisledon and I won’t
desert. But I can’t face the Front. I know I shall be killed or worse, break
down.
So that is why we are
leaving this life together. I couldn’t face a life without my Archie. We have
talked it through and we are resolved to drown ourselves, face to face, mouth
to mouth and with our lips pressed together. We shall breathe our last breaths
together.
When you find our bodies, you should find a return GWR
ticket to Chisledon, my military pass and 11 shillings and sixpence in my
purse. All I will have is my wristlet
watch, my gold bangle, my necklet and my brooch. Our wordly goods are of no
worth to us. Instead we await our Saviour with our final baptism. Our last
glimpses of wordly life will be of each other.
We apologise for our love, but I am certain that I shall be
killed or worse as I have said. And I
cannot face a lifetime of loneliness without my Archibald as I have said. We
have decided to leave this Vale of Tears and find Salvation with the Prince of
Peace in Heaven.
The time has come to
tie the bridal knot with the tailcoat of Archibald’s mackintosh and commit our
bodies and souls to Jesus. These are our final words.
Signed Dorothy Beard and
Archibald Clutterbuck Knee 3.30 am August 27th 1916'
(Imagined by me, September 2014)
When the bodies were found, Dorothy’s watch had stopped at 11
minutes to four o’clock. The manuscript has only just come to light.
He took her by the
lily white hand,
He kissed both cheek
and chin,
They walked down to
the waterside,
And they gently
wandered in.
Their bodies lay
intertwined,
Two lovers in death
conjoined,
Imagine Hamlet and
Ophelia,
Lying drowned
together,
Beneath the fronds
and pond side ferns,
In the Iron Gates
Pond at Longfords,
Lying hand in hand,
Instead of alone in
No Man’s Land.
Monday September 1st 2014-08-31
It was a warm, damp
and humid sort of day
When I caught the
number 46 bus to Nailsworth:
I walked past the
Weighbridge Inn (scene of the inquest),
Then along to
Longfords Mill,
Searching for the
Iron Mills Pond and the suicide spot.
I had a chat with a
couple of friendly residents:
‘It must be down
there, towards Iron Mills.
The other end of
Longfords is Gatcombe Lake,
So it must be down
the other way. It’s marsh now. It’s been drained.
It’s funny now you
mention it. Some people have said it’s haunted down there.
It’s the only place
in the entire mill that has a dark feeling about it.’
I met another man
down by the water’s edge:
‘My niece is a Buddhist
and when she comes to stay she always says
There is an ambience
down there. She says she feels the presence of departed souls.
There wasn’t a family
in the country that wasn’t touched by that war.
That’s why we’re
standing here talking today.’
I wandered on, taking
pictures of where I imagined they carefully placed
His hat, her bonnet
and umbrella,
Gazing at the flowing
waters, weirs and sluice gate,
Pondering on the
spring-source of the waters that took their lives,
But my reverie was
disturbed by a ‘phone call
(Our grocery bill for
our holiday cottage, and whether we should have left the hot water on,
A pleasantly small
grocery bill, and would I check about the water),
Until I reconnected
with the past by recreating their route down from Minchinhampton
(In a reverse
manner);
I was on the path the
two lovers would have taken on that fateful night,
But my mind was full
of questions:
Did they walk down
the lane hand in hand for the whole time?
Or arm in arm, just
like a courting couple?
Was the umbrella ever
opened to keep off any rain?
Was a brow ever
mopped on a humid night?
Did they
circumspectly avoid any puddles or footfalls?
Were their minds made
up from the start of their descent to the mill?
Did the plan develop
as they walked down the lane?
Were minds made up
before they reached the pond?
How mutual was the
decision?
Were there any second
thoughts or doubts?
Was there ever a
backwards, wistful, glance at candled or gas mantled windows?
Was their path
illuminated by a bright moon sky?
Was it reflected in
the waters?
Why did they leave
the cap, the bonnet and the umbrella?
Did either fight for
life as the waters invaded their lungs?
Or was there a meek
acquiescent submission?
Did their short lives
pass before them in the waters, resignedly,
Or was there an
electric regret?
Were they entering
the Kingdom of Heaven through final baptism?
I passed a thick
trunked sessile oak, a sapling when they passed this way,
Steadily climbing to
West End, Minchinhampton,
Where Archibald closed
a final front door on August 27th, 1916,
Then along the
Tetbury Road, to the Baptist Church,
Where the gravestones
were laid out in serene semi-circles –
I cut my hands on
thorns trying to read each stone’s lettering,
Until I at last ended
my melancholy search:
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
OUR DEARLY LOVED AND
ONLY CHILD
ARCHIBALD C. KNEE
WHO DIED AUGUST 27th
1916
AGED 24 YEARS
NO ONE KNOWS THE SILENT HEARTACHE
ONLY THOSE CAN TELL
WHO HAVE LOST THEIR BEST AND DEAREST
WITHOUT A LAST FAREWELL
Then underneath:
ALSO OF MY DEAR
HUSBAND CHARLES H. KNEE
WHO DIED SEPT 16th
1922
There was, in front
of the headstone,
A small wickerwork
basket that had sunken into the grass,
The remains of a
Christmas floral dressing perhaps,
Left by a well-wisher
paying their respects.
I retraced my steps
back towards town, past Chapel Lane,
(Where the hearse
would have travelled on its sombre path
To Archibald’s final resting
place),
To photograph the
names on the war memorial,
Where the alphabet of
the fallen jumps from
George W Jones to Christopher
Lawrence;
I read and reflected:
If Archibald had
returned to Chisledon,
And had been killed
on his first night in France,
Then his name would
be up there:
TO THE MEMORY OF THE
MEN OF THIS PLACE WHO FOUGHT AND FELL
IN THE GREAT WAR
1914-1918
THESE DIED IN WAR SO
THAT WE IN PEACE MIGHT LIVE
THEY GAVE THEIR BEST
SO WE OUR BEST SHOULD GIVE
I left Minchinhampton
in pensive mood
(Was not Archibald
(and Dorothy) a victim of war, too?),
To walk across the
common and down the hill to Amberley,
In search of Dorothy’s
grave at Holy Trinity
(There is a Victorian
post-box in the wall there,
Did Dorothy send
Archie her letters there?),
The Victorian
graveyard is of surprising and staggering size,
And I traipsed
through the wet shadowed grass,
Carefully examining
each epitaph,
But unlike Pip, my
expectations were low,
How on earth could I
hope to find a needle in a haystack of the dead?
This was more like a
necropolis,
Rather than just a
graveyard full of weather beaten headstones,
And I was just on the
point of giving up,
When two gravestones
from 1915 caught my eye,
And a sense of
intuition that the third in line,
With such a prominent
RIP engraved on a cross might be the one,
Proved to be correct.
It was with a shout
of triumph, when I read the name:
Dorothy Beard.
The grave was in a
damp, sequestered, wood strewn corner,
The cross has tilted
forward, the canting
Making it difficult
to read the lettering at the base of the plinth;
I had to get down on
all fours,
Using my bare hands
to remove the patina of time:
THE BELOVED DAUGHTER
OF NATHANIEL AND ELIZABETH BEARD
BORN JAN 12th
1898 DIED AUGUST 28th 1916
LORD ALL PITYING JESU
BLEST
GRANT HER THY ETERNAL
REST
(There is a disparity
in the dates of their death,
But August 28th
is, in fact, correct:
Dorothy’s watch
stopped at 3.50 a.m. –
But they went
missing, of course, on the night of the 27th.)
There was a small
wooden basket similar to the one at Archibald’s grave,
Down in the ground
with the sere leaves, chippings, twigs and sticks,
There was some broken
glass too that I descried when on hands and knees,
Perhaps the remains
of a jam jar or vase, blown over in a storm;
I stood back and
studied the gravestones to the immediate left of Dorothy’s,
The first name was
that of LONGFORD WILLIAM TAYLOR, BORN 1864
He died the year
before Dorothy, in 1915,
But SARAH THE WIFE OF
THE ABOVE,
Who was also born in
1864, lived as a widow for 46 years –
Until her death in
1961 –
What memories she
would have carried of Dorothy into the nuclear age,
That poor young girl
who wandered into Iron Gates Pond with her fiancée,
All those years ago…
Next to that grave
stood a tall headstone
(With a small wooden
remembrance cross attached, with wire, to its centre),
Listing three family
deaths in a sorrowful year of 1915,
Including a son
killed in action in France, aged nineteen years:
KILLED IN A FAR OFF
LAND
NO LOVED ONE BY TO
TAKE HIS HAND
A LOVING COMRADE
CLOSED HIS EYES
FAR FROM HIS NATIVE
LAND HE LIES
I took a final
picture of Dorothy’s grave
(Wondering if Dorothy
and Archibald talked of that recent gravestone,
And how that might
have affected their mood),
Before walking back
home over Rodborough Common,
With as view to soft
lit Severn:
‘Severn’s most fair
today!
See what a tide of
blue
She pours, and
flecked away
With gold, and what a
crew
Of seagulls snowy
white
Float around her to
delight..’
And also Gurney’s
lines on the Somme in my mind:
‘Suddenly into the
still air burst thudding
And thudding and cold
fear possessed me all…
But still a hope I
kept that were we there going over,
I, in the line, I
should not fail, but take recover
From others’ courage,
and not as coward be known…’
Archibald, you must
have met Dorothy some times when courting,
Over there at Tom
Long’s Post, wandering towards the sunset,
Gazing in rapture at
the line of the river,
With Sugar Loaf
etched behind against the western skies,
And you, Dorothy,
must have walked through Brimscombe so many times,
Arm in arm with
Archibald,
Where Gurney bicycled
and walked:
‘One lucky hour in
the middle of my tiredness,
I came under the
pines of the sheer steep
And saw the stars
like steady candles gleam
Above and through;
Brimscombe, wrapped (past life) in sleep!...
That ringed-in hour
of pines, stars, and dark eminence.
(The thing we looked
for in our fear of France).’
The fear of France…
And all roads seemed
as though they might well lead to France…
Unless you walked out
one night,
Arm in arm,
Along the New Road
that led to the Iron Gates Pond.
No comments:
Post a Comment