Henry Langton Skrine - An account of a visit in 2004 to his death site in Ypres
On an overcast and misty morning in late August last I found myself, an ex-RAF man, standing at the side of the Menin Road 2.5 kilometres east of Ypres.
I was surrounded by several members of the Light Infantry Association (Somerset) whose privileged guest I was. We were looking toward the slope of the Bellawaarde Ridge, across one of the many bloody battlefields of the First World War. A thin drizzle was reducing the visibility of the nearby ploughed fields to the same state of sodden desolation that must have confronted the tens of thousands British and Empire soldiers who marched through the Menin Gate into the unspeakable horrors of the Ypres Salient, many of them never to return.
At a signal our group turned across the Menin Road and made our way along a narrow track towards a small copse named Railway Wood. At a point near the wood we stopped and turned to face a roadside memorial. It was a simple stone cross mounted on a semi-sphere resting on a two tier stone plinth surrounded by a carefully tended oblong of gravel. The inscription on the memorial reads, "To the glory of God and in loving memory of Henry Langton Skrine, Captain 6th Somerset Light Infantry, who fell in action and was buried near this spot 25th September 1915. In memory also of the men of his Company who lie here with him. Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori".
Henry Langton Skrine was born on the 12th November 1880, the only son of colonel Henry Mills Skrine and Lady Mary Skrine of Warleigh and Claverton Manors. Educated at Eton and Balliol, he was gazetted into the Somerset Light Infantry in 1906. On 7th October 1914 he married Ferdinanda Anna Josephine d'Orgeva. His father was a well-known local figure and JP, being at one time the chairman of Weston (Bath) Magistrates' Court. Upon his father's death in 1915 Henry (junior) inherited the Warleigh and Claverton properties, together with family possessions in Cookham and Maidenhead.
On 21st May 1915, as Commander of 'A' Company, 6th Battalion Somerset Light Infantry, Captain Skrine was posted to France and by the following September found himself in the Ypres Salient. On the 23rd September an order from the 42nd Infantry Brigade was received: " 'A' Company under Captain Skrine will move into the frontline trenches tonight passing the Menin Gate at 7pm." The Company's task was to defend the existing line against enemy counter-attacks following an unsuccessful attack by the British troops on the German lines. They did so but at heavy cost. A report to Captain Skrine's wife stated: "Diring the attack Captain Skrine saw Germans collecting in a communications trench. Immediately he ordered his men up and ordered rapid fire on the enemy. A machine gun on the flank opened up in return and your husband fell, shot through the head. He was buried by his Company in rear of the fighting line."
Captain Skrine's body was never found although his battlefield cross was recovered near Gully Wood in 1920. His sister and widow erected the memorial to him near to where he had fallen and maintained it as a private memorial until it was taken into the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission helped by an annual contribution from the Somerset Light Infantry Association.
Nearer home a sad memorial to him can be found on the east side of the south transept of St Swithun's church, Bathford in the form of a beautiful stained glass window bearing the words: "To the glory of God and in loving memory of Henry Mills Skrine and his only son Henry Langton Skrine this window is erected by the widow and mother." The window forms part of a small family chapel in the transept which contains plaques commemorating various members of the Skrine family, the whole illustrative of kindred fortitude, together with the sense of social involvement so common in those days. Another memorial to Henry Langton Skrine can be found in St Mary's church at Claverton and his name also appears on the Menin Gate at Ypres.
On that grey and drizzly morning, standing on a muddy track overlooking the former No-Mans-Land up to the crest of the Bellewaarde Ridge, I felt privileged to be the guest of the Somerset Light Infantry Association (whose members include my twin brother George) who in their turn took up the torch from the likes of Captain Skrine and bore it through the second tragic conflict of 1939-45. Jack Eglington now in his eighties, a Normany veteran of the 4th Battallion of the Somersets, stepped smartly forward and with an immaculate salute laid a wreath of poppies on that lonely cross. We stood silently in the rain for a while. We looked and we thought and then we went quietly away.
I would like to express my thanks to my friends in the Light Infantry Association (Somerset), to Major Bill Hanna for providing me with so much information on this sad story which was repeated countless times during the 1914-1918 conflict, and to the Rev. Tim Ling, lay reader Gerry Miller and all members of St Swithun's church Bathford, who made my wife Sally and me so welcome on our visit.