Posted on Nov. 11: McMaster’s soldier poet: Bernard Freeman Trotter

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Trotter_Bernard_opt.jpg” caption=”Bernard Trotter”]On Nov. 11, we remember the brave men and women who died serving our country. In this article, a McMaster graduate and soldier poet is remembered.

In a Remembrance Day address in 1996, the then University Chancellor, James Taylor, reviewed the accomplishments of fellow alumnus Bernard Freeman Trotter. He aptly described him as a memorable and worthy representative of those McMaster graduates and students who died serving in the two world wars of the 20th century and whose names are honoured in Alumni Memorial Hall. Toronto-born Bernard Freeman Trotter was educated at Baptist schools, Horton Academy in Nova Scotia and Woodstock College in Ontario, the latter an affiliate of McMaster University. In the fall of 1907, in the company of his
brother, Reginald – a future historian at Queen9s University in Kingston -he embarked for sunny California in the hope of improving his shaky health.

A year spent tending a lemon ranch and two years as a private teacher on the Pacific Coast appeared to do the trick. In 1910 he returned to Canada and enrolled in McMaster University, the Baptist institution then located in Toronto where his English-born father, Thomas, served on the theological faculty.

By the time Bernard reached his senior year, the Great War (or the First World War) had erupted in Europe and Canada had entered the fight alongside what was then styled the Mother Country.

Consequently, in his final months at McMaster, academic studies shared time with the duties he undertook in the University9s war-inspired Officers9 Training Corps. Room was also found, however, for other undergraduate pursuits, including his active participation in campus clubs and literary groups, where he shone as a poet,
some of his pieces making it all the way to Harper9s Magazine and other American journals. Not surprisingly, he served as a productive editor of the McMaster University Monthly, a forerunner of the Silhouette and other student publications on campus.

In an early wartime issue of the Monthly, his contribution, “To the Students of Liege,” feelingly expressed his reaction to the German invasion of “little” Belgium, the act that had helped to trigger Britain9s entry into the war in August 1914.

In old Liege, when those dark tidings came

Of German honour callously forsworn

And the red menace that should bring the scorn

Of ages on the Kaiser9s name and shame

And crown their city with a deathless fame,

The students wrote, they say, that summer morn

For their degrees, then joined the hope forlorn

Of Liberty, and passed in blood and fame.

O valiant souls! Who loved not Duty less

Than Honor, whom no fears could move to shirk

The common task, no tyrant9s threat subdue

When Right and Freedom called in their distress
–
Not vain your sacrifice nor lost your work:

The World9s free heart beats high because of you.

In the circumstances, Bernard, a wartime student himself, was understandably anxious to “do his own bit” following his graduation in 1915. But he was in for a disappointment. Because his health could still be problematic at times, he was deemed medically unfit for service in the Canadian armed forces. Nevertheless, a welcome opportunity to serve came his way shortly after he had embarked on postgraduate studies at the University of Toronto.

When the hard-pressed British (Imperial) army announced plans to recruit Canadians and other colonials, as they were then dubbed, for service in its officer corps, he eagerly applied. Health considerations in this case seemed to pose no problem; his application for a commission was accepted and he left Toronto for England in March 1916. Following a training period, part of
which was spent amongst Oxford9s “dreaming spires,” the freshly minted
lieutenant was posted to the maelstrom known as the Western Front. In due course he was assigned to the 11th Battalion of the Leicestershire (Pioneer) Regiment.

Bernard9s experiences in England and France were graphically and often
amusingly related in a series of well-preserved letters to his family. In what turned out to be his last one, written on April 27, 1917, he advised his “Dear People” that he had recently been appointed assistant transport officer in his battalion and given the task of bringing up supplies to the front line. “… I [soon] found myself,” he disclosed,

…mounted on my trusty steed in

charge of a convoy, sniffing again

the acrid reek of high explosive,

and listening with a very personal

interest to the whistle and bang of

the shells. We had a few rather

warm moments during the night

but … we got back without any

untoward incident, so I had my

usual good luck ….

Then, a few days later, on May 7, 1917, Bernard9s good luck sadly and
abruptly ran out. While again convoying supplies he came under heavy
shellfire and was instantly killed. He was 26.

After his death, Bernard9s family assembled and published his poetry. His poetry collection appeared in 1917 under the title A Canadian Twilight and Other Poems of War and of Peace and would join In Flanders9 Fields and the other literary contributions that were such a defining and poignant feature of the Great War. It was greeted with favourable reviews at home and abroad.

An enthusiastic Times Literary Supplement, for one, hailed the author as the “Canadian Soldier Poet” and praised him for his “3ardent love of letters.”

The book was subsequently reprinted in Canada and over the years several of its poems have been selected for Canadian and American anthologies. In 1927, a grateful French government had his name inscribed in a section of the Pantheon in Paris devoted to those writers and poets who had fought and died in France during the conflict.

Bernard Freeman Trotter9s wartime letters now repose in the McMaster University Library thanks to the generosity of his nephew and namesake, Bernard Fisher Trotter, also a McMaster graduate (945). The latter also kindly provided information and the photograph for this article.