 | We will remember them | |
Introduction by Alan Moore | |
| When we decided to research the histories of the men on our war memorial it seemed a fairly simple task. Collect the information, write it up and publish it. However, there is one solders story that deserves a wider audience - Nicholas Herbert Todd. As the son of the Rector of Occold he would have had a privileged upbringing as indeed it was. He was educated firstly at Felsted, Essex and then gaining an MA at Keble College Oxford. After leaving Oxford in 1901 he devoted his life to education and became an exceptional schoolmaster first at Balham in London and finally at Sedbergh Preparatory School in North Yorkshire. | He was a poet and a playwright. In keeping with the self-effacing man that he was. He never intended that his poems and plays should be published beyond the school, but after his death his school collected and published them as a tribute to a man small in stature but large in talent and love of children. When NHT enlisted in the summer of 1916 his headmaster wrote: “We have also lost a very good friend in Mr Todd, who had felt it his duty to join the army and was at Winchester training for something that he entirely unfitted”. His life ended tragically young on the Somme in the winter of 1916. |
| The Sedbergh School obituary - an appreciation |
Here and there in the world is found a man who seems to bear a mysterious passport to the intimacy of children. For him the barrier of age does not exist: consciously or unconsciously he is as though in his own passage through the house of childhood he had hit on some hidden door that opened upon a garden of rare delight: and whilst his companions had passed ere noonday far beyond the walls of that fair place, evening had found him still wandering there, content to ask no other home for all his days, if only the happiness be his of welcoming to the wonders of that garden some few fortunates at least of that daily succession of children. Such a one was Nicholas Herbert Todd. What his life had been before he came to Sedbergh – save that he wore on his blazer the arms of Keble College, and spoke of Suffolk as a native – we did not know, nor did it occur to us to wonder; It was scarcely conceivable that he could ever have done other than teach small boys to call wild flowers by their names, to write painful Latin elegiacs, to love the becks and the fells, birds and beast, the satire of Gilbert and Sullivan, the human sympathy of Dickens. For all this was something more to him than a profession, a thing to be laid aside in leisure hours. His long days work was devoted to boys; how much they claimed of his idle thoughts will appear in these pages: for this whimsical little play was conceived, that naïve little verse was scribbled down, in the odd moment before a French lesson, or in the brief hour of freedom after lights out. So when in his eleventh year at Sedbergh, the war claimed this gentle and vivacious little figure, with the merest shrug of the shoulders he gave a Childs uncomprehending obedience to that authority which banished him from his comrades of a lifetime. After a few months training at Winchester he crossed to France in the autumn of 1916 and fell on October 7th, a rifleman in the Queens Westminsters. |
A Tribute from a schoolmaster colleague to NHT | |
| I think there must be strange delightful stir Along the flower-girl ways of Paradise As each hour brings another sojourner Earth-dusty still and redolent with sighs. All breathless with a gratified surprise. So surely in the moment that you died, There must have passed a flicker of the news Along the stirring sun-swept avenues; And as you came, with quick and impulsive stride And deprecating smile, wild to deride The fluttering acclamations that would rise From all the waving trees, and nodding grass, I fancy through the shade the word would pass | “This man knew joy and grief, was wise Where others stumbled, loved the fragrant earth And flowers and winds and quiet Autumnal skies; He gave men laughter, nursed the frailest birth Of fancy-joyed in comradeship: his mind Was quick in mystery, pondered in the shade, Loathed war and cruelty – was unafraid.” And as the whisper passed, the dreaming ways, Perchance, awoke as magic; all your days Came hurrying with phantom feet, to bind A wreath of flowers on your reluctant head. I like to think how you, who loved not praise, Endured the welcome of the clear-eyed dead. |
Bronze Plaque in St Michael & All Angels, Occold | |
IN VERY LOVING MEMORY OF | (1) It is sweet and right to die for your country "The old lie" according to Wilfred Owen's poem DULCE ET DECORUM. (2) Everlasting light shine upon him |
During his time of training at Winchester | |
| 2, W.R., Hut 220, Hazeley Down, Winchester. Dear Geoff I wonder if you'd like to be A soldier of King George, the same as me. To live in Huts arranged in long straight rows, Or if you'd rather, call them Bungalows. Your bed, three boards, on which you rest at night, | I hope when I return, if e'er I do, You'll know your Latin Grammar all right through! And have no trouble, when I am a civvy, In reading off at sight a page Livy. Meanwhile I wander sometimes up and down, Signed |
| MEMORIES. August 1916 Now I am a Tommy, a soldier of the King, If you've slept between rough blankets in an army “bungalow” I cannot well Imagine Old Homer forming fours, If Hood had cleaned a boiler out or spent three hours in scrubbing Signed | |
Conclusion | |
In the last verse of his poem Memories he looks forward to a time when he will be able to return to his life and write what he was feeling. He never returned and he never wrote of his feelings. He is commemorated on our memorial but his time at Sedbergh and his influence on the boys there will also be his memorial. |
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This is an ongoing document and additional information will be added as it becomes available.
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Alan Moore
Address: 7 Cedars Close, Occold
Tel: 01 379 678 956
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This page was last updated on 21 April 2010 at 11:25
