The details when they came were scanty but enough. That early morning,
the Brigade on their left being engaged in a small local attack, the
Essex standing to arms had been bombarded by the enemy’s light artillery.
Oscar was threading his way behind his men, all anxiety on their account,
and had just asked Sergeant Clarke: ‘Is everybody all right?’ At that
moment a small high-explosive just cleared the parapet, but not the
opposite edge of the narrow trench, bursting close behind Oscar’s head:
he died where he fell unconscious, and was buried that night by a party
of the men he loved.
It is not for us to add one word of our own; but with a very few of the
wonderful tributes from others, we shall leave our dear son to rest in
the hearts of many loving friends.
Said the _Eton Chronicle_, in an obituary notice already quoted on the
opening page:
Oscar Hornung came from Mr. Churchill’s at Stone House in
September 1908 to Mr. H. de Havilland, and after six years left
last July to go to Cambridge. His inherited love of literature
made him an eager reader of books at all times. A Division
Master recognised this one year when he gave him a special
prize for English work. A good cross-country runner he was
second in Junior and third in Senior Steeplechases. At football
he played a hard game, and his energy as Captain of Games was
notorious. A few days after leaving Eton, thinking that the
best chance to get to the front was in a reserve regiment, he
joined the 3rd Essex. At Harwich he lived until April in a
farm-house on the marsh next the sea, and in April he went with
his enthusiasm to France. Among other exploits he one night
leading three others crept 200 yards to the barbed wire until
they could hear the diggers, and then after a successful bomb
throwing came back with his ear badly injured. On July 6th when
behind the parapet he was struck by a shell and died in the
trench without recovering consciousness.
A letter from a General Officer says: ‘His platoon were wild
with grief, as they worshipped him. The men said he was
absolutely fearless and was employed on all sorts of jobs,
machine guns, bombs, patrols, etc,’ Any one who knew him will
recognise the boy at Eton. He revelled in every hour of his
life at the FRONT just as he had in life in general. ‘He lies
buried in a cemetery made by the Essex Regiment behind a farm
which goes by the name of Turco Farm on the east side of the
Yser Canal.’
A simple-minded and religious boy he lived the straightest of
lives, always at the top of some enthusiasm whether playing
games or fighting Germans. His affection for the School at all
times was intense and he wrote that Eton meant more than ever
to him out there; every letter to the last showed the same
spirit. Full of thought for others he was loved by all who knew
him.
Comment, again, is hardly for us, who like to feel that this generous
writer and friend did think of Oscar as a member of his house up to the
outbreak of war; in spirit he was a most loyal member to the last; but
he had actually left Eton at Easter, in order to read for King’s, the
college of his own unhesitating choice, where the following October was
to have found him installed. He had done his Little-go, finished for ever
with uncongenial subjects; had only History, Literature, and Life before
him!
From Eton came other tributes, which should speak for themselves if space
permitted, and two that must. One was the beautiful letter from Peter
Blacker, Captain of the House most of the two years Oscar was Captain of
Games. All of it I cannot bring myself to give, but this much will show
the noble comfort given, while conveying some idea of Oscar’s Eton life:
... As you know, Oscar went to Eton two halves before me.
During my first two or three weeks there, I suffered from a
hideous form of homesickness that must have made me appear
a very unattractive person to everyone. The first time I
saw Oscar was my second evening, when he came into my room
and talked to me as one schoolboy talks to another, telling
me what to do, and explaining the somewhat complicated
conventions of Eton, and in his jolly way giving me a few words
of encouragement which meant the world to me then, and for
which I have ever since been grateful. But it was only some 2
years later that I got to know him intimately, and began to
appreciate those fine qualities that have subsequently meant
such a lot to the House.
I saw that irrepressible and effervescing flow of energy, which
appeared in everything he did, governed throughout by the
highest principles, and directed by an indomitable moral and
physical courage.
While a lower boy, and during his first year as an Upper, his
uncompromising devotion to what he considered Right sometimes
brought him into conflict with environing—and at that time
contrary—influences, and caused him to lead a somewhat isolated
life, so that it was only when he reached a real position of
eminence in the house, some 3 years ago, that his influence was
given full play. And immediately others began to fall in behind
him, and follow his lead.
I tell you this with the strictest truth, that during the
last 2 years of his Eton career, when I was thrown into close
contact with him, and came to know him well, I never heard him
say an unjustifiably harsh or unkind word to anyone.
Always ready to see another’s good points in preference to
his bad ones; always scrupulously careful never to express
an uncharitable thought about anyone; always the first
to own himself in the wrong should he feel that he had
acted mistakenly; always straightforward and loyal; always
sympathetic, unselfish and kind, he was always loved and
admired by everyone who knew him.
I can tell you with perfect frankness that during the whole
time that I have known Oscar I do not once remember him failing
in any of these qualities in the smallest degree without having
recognized the failure immediately and without making immediate
reparation, all personal considerations laid aside.
What he has been able to do for the House in this way neither
Mr. de Havilland nor I can ever make you understand.
I feel that in Oscar I have lost that most valuable and
treasured of possessions;—a friend upon whom one might count
and depend, and whom one could trust. I can pay no higher
tribute to him than this.
Our hearts go out to this dear fellow, now fighting gallantly in his
turn, and already a far heavier loser by the war than when he wrote this
noble letter. We can only thank him with our prayers.
A younger friend of Oscar’s, the friend of many happy holidays, wrote to
show us what he was away from home and from school:
I am just sending you a line, to tell you how we all loved
Oscar, and how deeply we feel for you. All who got to know him
well, discovered what a beautiful character he had, and all
loved him. I have never met, nor do I expect I ever shall meet,
a person with such a noble heart, and so unselfish. He never
said or did anything unkind to or about anyone.
From the front his friend and company commander, Guy de la Mare, wrote of
him as ‘a terrible loss to the company,’ and as one who ‘knew no fear
at all,’ The last letter shall be Sergeant-Major Clarke’s—for Oscar’s
affectionate belief in his platoon sergeant was very soon to be justified
by ‘old man Clarke’s’ further promotion. How glad the boy would have
been! How touched and how embarrassed by this:
I must say, Sir, your dear son died like a Gentleman and a
Soldier. He was always to the front and a braver man there
never was, his thoughts were always for the men under him and
to their comfort he was always seeing. And there was no one
more sorry to lose him than his platoon and myself. He was a
promising officer and if he had continued in the service he
would have had a fine career before him. On several occasions
he himself organised bomb throwing parties and proceeded within
a few yards of the German trenches, and I know on a couple of
occasions he must have done considerable damage and confused
them as they were rather quiet afterwards for some time.
I might mention, Sir, that your brave son lies in a quiet spot
beside more of his comrades on the famous battlefield of Ypres.
I served all through the South African War, but was never in
such a place as that, and I am not sorry to say, Sir, that I
have left that place for another along the line.
The whole battalion left that place the day after Oscar’s death; he told
us they were going to, but it was God’s Will that he should stay behind.
But if against our enemies there is one hand still lifted that we long
to grasp, one elbow to which we wish more power, they are those of the
gallant Sergeant-Major, who was our dear boy’s guide and friend in the
day of battle, and in the hour of death.
‘Trusty and well beloved’ were the words that reached us almost in
that hour; and almost in the next came a gracious human message from
the King and Queen themselves, even as it were in tender confirmation
of the stately phrase. And yet, could words apply more closely to all
our glorious boys—above all to Oscar’s ‘one class who are enjoying
themselves in this war’? In any other country, by one means or the other,
the men were to be had: it is only our Public Schools which could have
furnished at once an army of natural officers, trained to lead, old in
responsibility, and afraid of nothing in the world but fear itself. Their
teaching will not be forgotten by those of us whose strange fate it is to
inherit our sons’ great names, to follow humbly in the steps we thought
to guide. We shall remember that each was also the son of some great
school which shares our sorrow and our pride, and which perhaps did more
than we ourselves to make him what he was.
Besides Oscar, I am thinking of two who were here to mourn him last July.
Robin Blacker was his old friend’s brilliant young brother—so young that
he had once been Oscar’s fag. He had left Eton long before his time, yet
full of Eton honours. He might have been First Keeper of the Field this
very half: he preferred to play for England, and, in the Guards’ great
hour at Loos, fell most gloriously, thirty yards ahead of his platoon,
with none between him and his last goal.
In the same hour and the same attack John Kipling was last seen alive. He
was even younger than Robin Blacker, but the gap between him and Oscar,
two equally independent characters, had long been filled by the love of
brothers. It is said that after Oscar fell John’s scheme of war included
the personal vendetta, just as one younger than any of them is already
preparing ‘to avenge John as he avenged Oscar.’ John’s lot was not to
spend many weeks under shell-fire, like Oscar and his merry men; but he
lived to lead a platoon of the Irish Guards in such fighting as Oscar
never saw. God send that he is living still, and restore him even yet to
the world our dear boys loved so well, and surrendered without a sigh!
It may be remembered that in one of those last two letters Oscar promised
us more verses of his own. They came at length, among his other papers,
in scribbled, experimental fragments which I have no right to put
together here, deeply moving as they are to us who can read between the
sincere and simple lines. They were not directly about the war: they were
about Stone House, his first school and in a sense my own, but to us
both a second home. Yet they touch quite openly and naturally on Death,
and on all that might come instead to hearts deepened and strengthened
by the war. To Oscar it was Death that came before the lines were nearly
finished; yet it is from them we know, what his happy letters never
hinted, that all the time he was as ready even for that as for everything
else. He thinks of old schoolfellows who have gone before him, and only
asks, if die he must, to ‘die as they did, by their schoolboy honour
aided.’ He pictures the Chapel at Stone House, where reproductions of
the regimental colours of Old Boys killed in the Boer War hang like true
knights’ banners:
Once again look up above
At those flags in order hung
To commemorate our love....
‘And there he stops,’ said Mr. Churchill in his beautiful sermon about
our boy. ‘It may be the last words he ever wrote. Some day soon we shall
have his flag to “commemorate our love.” Our love, for one of the most
fearless, one of the kindest, one of the simplest, one of the purest
boys we ever had in this school.’
And not at Stone House only is his dear name to endure, but also at Eton,
for all the hundreds she has lost. Of their own generous accord, the
boys of his Eton house are placing a tablet on the wall of his old room;
and for the tablet his revered ‘R. K.’ has written out one of his own
stanzas, adding, ‘I like them for Oscar because of the last line’:—
He scarce had need to doff his pride or slough the dross of Earth—
E’en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth,
In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth.