Lives of the First World War

John Bayley paid tribute to Stuart Hodgson with the following in the Wellington College Magazine: My young friend, Second-Lieut Stuart Hodgson, 3rd. Battalion The York and Lancaster Regiment, who has lived with me since he was three years of age, was killed in action on the Somme, October 12th 1916. This brave lad felt it to be his duty to his country to join the Forces and his equally brave mother raised no objection when he presented himself at Headquarters and took a Commission at sixteen and a half years of age! His was one of the grim Battalions which held the infernal Ypres salient through the awful winter 1915-16, during which Lieut. Hodgson and another officer were given a most valuable map of the German Trenches and Machine Guns. Soon afterwards he was invalided home, and for a time undertook work of Captain’s rank at Sunderland and Newcastle. In due course he returned to the Front, and in a bold attempt to make it easier for his men to advance, he made the ‘great sacrifice’. He is reported by those who worked by his side as one of the cheeriest and most encouraging of young officers, that he hardly knew what fear meant, and was a great credit to the Regiment to which he was attached. In our School, in our Country and Empire, let us give eternal honour to all these young souls who like my ‘young charge’ have nobly fought and nobly died that we might live. All ‘old boys’ and parents who remember Mrs. Hodgson will join with the whole School in tendering to her our heart-felt sympathy in the loss of her only son, but we would ask her in this hour of grief and sorrow, to try to share our feelings of pride in the great sacrifice she has made. Eleven mothers and sons are giving their best in the service of God and Humanity. We hate War, but we prefer War rather than Liberty and Civilisation should be crushed under the heel of Prussian militarism, and if in this titanic struggle, our brave young heroes die at the post of duty we may take comfort in the words of John Oxenham: Whether they live or die, Safely they’ll rest; Every true one of them, Thy Chosen Guest. No soul of them shall fail, Whate’er the past; Who dies for Thee and Thine, Wins Thee at last. So my brave young friend Stuart, on the battlefield of France we leave thee, peacefully asleep not far from many of thine old schoolfellows, and to all of you our last words are: Farewell! Farewell! Until we meet, as we shall meet again. Mervyn Joyner (OWA Secretary)

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