A confession.   Yes, I am one of the billions now who use Facebook and in my case I do so in order to keep in touch with people and places which are dear to me.  People such as good friends, old comrades from my old regiment - the 10th Royal Hussars; Southampton Football Club and the fans forum, my old schools, people here in the village where I live; and places such as Cornwall, Gerrans and Portscatho, Fawley and Blackfield and Hythe and The Waterside.   Blackfield was where I spent most of the war years, sleeping under the stairs as the bombs rained down on Southampton every night and Fawley was where I first went to school.  

Hythe on the shore of Southampton Water is where we first lived as a family after my father came home after five years as a prisoner of war in Stalag V111B in Lamsdorf and it was at Hythe that I spent a wonderful boyhood with the sea on one side and the New Forest just up the road.  And in the last day or two, someone has posted some photos of Hythe on the Hythe and Waterside Facebook site and they brought back some very happy memories of those times.  With the consent of the photographer - and maybe in a fit of self-indulgence - here are those photos and the memories they recalled.   

The first is taken from what is now a little park that leads down to the water`s edge from The Grove - an imposing building which houses the offices of the Hythe and Dibden Parish Council.......

(Please click on photos for larger images)

When my father resumed civilian life after his trials in that unrelenting Stalag, he worked for the then BOAC, who had their flying boat maintenance operation at Hythe and we lived in a cottage next to The Grove, which was then a large private house and grounds.  I don`t know how or why but we were allowed to walk down to the end of what was the kitchen garden, which ended at the sea wall you can see in the picture.  

This next picture shows some of the new development that has taken place on the site of the former BOAC depot.........

All those years ago - late 40s/early 50s - there used to be a very large black hangar, where the flying boats were maintained and I still remember being enthralled as my mother and I used to sit on the sea wall and watch, spellbound, as firstly the bow of those great liners, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, would appear from behind the hangar and slowly the whole of those majestic ships would come into view. An awesome sight for me as a young boy  and one that lives with me still.

Lastly, another view of the shoreline of Hythe.......

As well as the Cunard liners, of course, there were passenger ships from all over the world coming in and out of Southampton, so Hythe was a good place to go beach combing. One of my school friends from Hythe Primary School and later Hardley, Billy Scammell and I used to spend many hours scouring the shore and we became fascinated by the empty matchboxes which had been thrown over board and washed up from the passing ships.  And so began our collection of match box tops and I still have mine to this day, 70 years on from those happy childhood days.   

Some years ago I discovered that Billy Scammell had passed away - in 2000 at the age of just 60 - when he left Hythe, as I did,  he went on to become a much admired and respected poet, author, critic and biographer.  He is remembered by a blue plaque on his old house in Alexandra Road but as we lost contact, having gone our separate ways, I have no idea whether he kept his collection. What I do know is that he retained a deep affection for Hythe, which features in some of his poems as `the village by the sea.`

So my thanks to the photographer, Julie Yeates, for taking these iconic photographs and for allowing me to reproduce them here.   Thanks for the memories, Julie, of a happy childhood in a happy place.  I hope it won`t be long before I can make another return visit.

IN NAME ONLY...

Like most communities up and down the land, here in Dibley the Parish Council are planning to mark the centenary of World War 1.   And in common with most other communities, we have our very own memorial outside the village church in memory of those service personnel who died in that dreadful conflict.   However, there are possibly six names missing from the war memorial and the Parish Council is attempting to establish a definite link with the village and to seek relatives to obtain their permission for names to be added.  

It`s then proposed to produce a booklet giving brief biographies of all residents of the village who are recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as having perished in the Great War.  This initiative would then be followed by producing a brief history of the village during the conflict and, finally, to include on the war memorial the names of local residents who have died as a result of service in any of this country`s conflicts since the end of the Second World War.

Now for good reason I may have been a tad critical of the Parish Council in the past but this initiative is well founded, wholly admirable and heartfelt and I hope it gets the support it needs to make it succeed.

Now all of this has the effect of making us reflect yet again on the appalling events that beset the world 100 years ago and at this distance it`s impossible to really imagine how things must have been.   But perhaps at least a flavour of those times may have been captured by my old school friend, the late William Scammell, in his poem `Remembering the Great War:-

Opaque and resonant as sacred texts
the names alone sound out a litany;
Passchendaele; Ypres, the Somme, Verdun.....

Some dropped perfect but for a sweet
smudge of gas - others, dispersing, spanned
earth in the wildest hug.

Men flashed hissing to their elements
like spit gobbed on a stove.  One officer
in nomansland apologised to his troops

behind for lasting in such loud slow screams.
Four men unwound their lives to staunch
his uproar - failed, like the concerted knuckles

hammered round his teeth.  Gowned neutrally
for christening, deaths, history thumbs
its cheap editions, weltering in echoes.

I think of Sassoon`s tall heart, contracting

fiercest love for his own men, one of whom
shot him from excess of zeal;  of Graves`s

stretched contempts.  The fires they grazed rot down
in village squares.  On memory`s floor words rut
and root, nosing blind and ghastly at the tongue.

Bill`s poem, like those of so many others, gives us a chilling glimpse of the almost indescribable horror that we, 100 years on, are struggling to comprehend.   And it has long occurred to me as surprising that it is still referred to as The Great War, but perhaps in name only, for in reality it was - and should be remembered as - the Most God-awful Horrific War there has ever been.

A SURPRISE PACKET...

It`s a small world. You may know that I spent most of my boyhood years in the village of Hythe on the western shore of Southampton Water, but that I now live in a village in mid-Kent, about 120 miles from Hythe.

Our local postman here in deepest Kent, Ray, also comes originally from Hythe and today he delivered a package through my letter box which came as a genuine surprise and a rare treat.

Early on in the life of these pages - click on `labels` at the bottom of this post - I recounted the story of my best friend from those schooldays in Hythe - Billy Scammell - who, as William Scammell went on to become an admired poet, critic, editor, reviewer and biographer. Sadly, Bill passed away too young back in 2000, when he was just 61. Like me and like Ray, Bill left Hythe in his teenage years to find his own way in life and he lived for many years in the Lake District, where his widow, Jan, still lives today.

Bill had a number of volumes of his own poetry published, along with editing collections of works by Ted Hughes and others and also producing a biography of Keith Douglas, the World War One poet. Last month, a collection of Bill`s critical essays and reviews was published under the title of `Nightwatch` which included commentaries on major writers - Hughes, Heaney and Larkin - as well as more general thoughts on the state of contemporary poetry.

And today,the unexpected package which Ray delivered turned out to be a copy of a just published volume of Bill`s poems, edited by Christopher Pilling and entitled `Inside Story.` It contains at least 100 of Bill`s poems all carefully selected from his previously published works and reflecting Bill`s development as a poet over the years, his journeys through the world, through time and through experience.

Willian Neil (Billy) Scammell

I will, like all his other works, enjoy it immensely and, as I do so, I will look back on our schooldays together in the same classrooms at Hythe Primary School and Hardley Secondary (we were both Hardley educated) and the times we spent together playing along the Solent shoreline, combing the beach for treasures thrown overboard from the great liners drifting in and out of Southampton.

But for me, perhaps the `nicest` thing about `Inside Story` is the fact that on the flyleaf of the book`s smart cover there is a picture of the plaque erected in Bill`s memory, along with the notation which reads, "This plaque is mounted on the wall of 13 Alexandra Road, Hythe, Southampton as a lasting tribute to the memory of the author. It was erected by members of the local poetry group at the instigation of an old school friend....in 2005 with assistance from the Arts Council England." I leave you to guess who that `old school friend` might have been.

William Neil Scammell (1939-2000)

Billy Scammell has a lot to answer for. He and I were `best friends` in our boyhood village on the shores of Southampton Water. We were born in the same year - Bill was a few months older than me - we started school together at the Primary School in Hythe before going on to the `big` school at Hardley, when we were both 11; you could say (and some do) that we were both Hardley educated.

Out of school we spent all our time together and Bill especially enjoyed being at the bottom of our garden, which ended at the sea wall, watching the great liners coming and going along Southampton Water. We spent hours combing the beach along Shore Road for those boyhood treasures which were tossed overboard from passing ships - we built up an impressive collection of soggy matchbox tops, some of which I still have, 60 years later.

For different reasons, we went our seperate ways in our teens - my family moved away and Bill started life in the office of the Southern Daily Echo before becoming a photographer on the Cunard liners, which gave him the chance to see the world and to see life. We lost contact but when I retired I decided to try and find Bill again. None of our (by now) old friends in Hythe knew what became of him and it wasn`t until I `googled` Bill a couple of years ago that I discovered the bitter sweet truth. That Bill won a scholarship for mature students and won a degree in English and Philosophy at Bristol University. That he became a Lecturer in English at Newcastle University. That he took up full-time writing in 1991, acting as chief poetry reviewer for the Independant on Sunday and contributing to The Guardian, The Spectator, TLS, Poetry Review and others. That he published ten volumes of poetry, edited several anthologies as well as a collection of Ted Hughes` prose (Winter Pollen) and wrote a critical study of Keith Douglas, the first World War poet. Google also advised that Bill passed away in 2000 - a bitter sweet revelation indeed.

Last year, the good folk of Hythe commemorated Bill`s life and work by the erection of a plaque on his old house in Alexandra Road, which he left in 1954 to embark on his journey through life. A fitting tribute to a considerable talent.

But for all his literary talents, perhaps his greatest gift to me was to bestow upon me the nickname `Snopper` all those years ago in our schooldays. Clearly, even at that age, he possessed the gift of inventive description. Some years ago, long before I found out what happened to Bill, I began to contribute to web forums. The spooky thing is that, when I did so, I chose `Snopper` as my username; perhaps a sub-conscious throwback to those boyhood days in what Bill described as our `village by the sea` and to the memory of a good friend.