PRESENTATION OUTLINE
He was born on August 3, 1887. He attended King's college in Cambridge. While at Cambridge, he developed an interest in acting and was president of the university Fabin society.
After experiencing a mental breakdown in 1913, he traveled and spent several months in America, Canada, and The south seas.
He returned to England at the outbreak of World War I and enlisted in the royal naval division.
On April 23, 1915, after taking part in the Antwerp Expedition, he died of blood poisoning from a mosquito bite while on route to Gallipoli with the navy.
He was buried on the island of skyros in the Aegean seas.
Brookes got a commission in the Royal Naval Division – a land based unit. In late September Brookes did some training in Kent and in October, along with his platoon, he embarked for France. His unit, the Anson Battalion, Royal Naval Division, was ordered to move into Belgium to help stem the German advance on Antwerp.
They came up against a flow of fleeing Belgian soldiers and refugees. Brookes and his men were temporarily based at a chateau at Vieux-Dieu. After they had moved out to some Belgian trenches, the chateau was hit by German artillery. The whole unit was ordered to withdraw and after catching a train to Ostend, they made their way back to Dover by October 9th. It had not been a particularly glorious introduction to the war.
The Soldier
This poem is part of a series of poems entitled 1914
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
This sonnet seems very peaceful, even though the topic is of a deceased soldiers memories. This is one of his most well known poems.
