THRUPP: 31 UPLANDS: 25 WHITESHILL: 36 WOODCHESTER: 25.
Chas writes: “In a town that is divided
by values and visions of war and peace; where the wearing of a poppy (for
some red for some white) is seen by some not as an act of Charity and Love
but as acts of personal controversy, something needs to be done to build
bridges…Couldn’t we all at least unite at Percy Dearmer’s Water Fountain to
remember those who laid down their lives in our service?”
THESE OAKRIDGE MEN
ALSO GAVE THEIR LIVES
E. Blackwell M. Blackwell A. Curtis W.M. Curtis A. Fern W. Fern P. Gardiner S. Gardiner
P. Hill W. Hunt W.G. Hunt R.T. Gardiner A. Robbins A. Rowles A. Smith T. White H. White A. Young E. Young F. Young E. Weare
In GRATEFUL MEMORY OF
George Edward Ivor Fry PTE. RAMC
James Frederick Fry SGT. NAV. RAF
Albert Hunt PTE. RAOC
Stanley Henry Morgan GNR. R.A.
R.C.Baker Stallard-Penoyre LT. R.N. (A)
Arthur Phipps GNR. R.A.
James Edward Young PTE. R. NORF. REG.
WHO FELL IN THE WAR OF 1939-45
INTO THY HAND O LORD
A Remembrance Walk to Oakridge and back to Stroud October 17th 2012
I caught the number 54 Cotswold Green bus,
On a russet-warm, apple-autumn day,
To Frampton Mansell Church,
In the 1920s footsteps of my dad,
Who lived here in a Great War Nissan hut;
His de-mob dad, seeking work,
My dad, playing conkers on his way toschool,
Or watching the trains on the viaduct,
Justas I do today in his memory.
Iwalked on down past the giant retaining wall,
Underthe railway and across the canal,
To climb the hill past streams, brooks, rills and springs,
To reach Oakridge Lynch War Memorial:
Thereare so many corners of foreign fields,
That are for ever England,
In word, dust, deed, blood, ash and bone,
But here, on Oakridge village green,
Is a cruciform water- trough,
Fed by a spring that is for ever England,
That roams through wild flowers,
Breathing English air,
Bless’d by the sun on its way to the Severn,
A heart of peace, under an English heaven,
Giving back thoughts of England given.
I read the inscriptions and then sat back on the green,
Chatting to a woman gathering flowers,
Who told me that during the Tewkesbury floods,
When piped water became polluted,
Oakridge village used the springs once more;
Another woman told me of the war graves in the churchyard,
Recently and lovingly cleaned and pristine-restored;
She pointed out my footpath to Eastcombe:
“Go past the old toll house.”
I walked past more springs,
Then the site of a Roman villa,
Thenmore springs and some tumuli,
Beforerain made me dispense with map and specs,
Tofollow my nose and ask for directions instead:
“Aimfor the waterfall”,
“Contour Mackhouse woods and aim south for Stroud”.
I walked past black-spot sycamore leaves,
Blood-red rowan and spiked-steel hawthorn,
Thunder crackling above like guns across the Channel,
Hailstones ricocheting like shrapnel;
My path was blocked by fallen trees,
Prickled barbed wire stars of holly,
Puddles like forlorn foxholes,
And a succession of map-marked Spouts,
Until I left No-Man’s Land.
I ambled along spring-line Thrupp Lane,
Then down the canal to the Lock-Keeper’s,
Where on an opposite wall,
A new piece of graffiti has appeared,
A Banksy-like badger’s face,
With a bullet in its blood-red eye.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
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