England Remembered

Francis Brett Young

Francis Brett Young began his medical career as a ship’s surgeon aboard the S.S. Kintuck sailing to the Far East.(1) On his return he set up practice at Brixham where his patients were mainly fisherman and sailor folk.(2) His wife, Jessica, established herself as a singer and Francis began a lifelong arrangement of accompanying her on the piano.(3)

Volunteering for the RMAC, Brett Young was commissioned Lieutenant on 1 January 1916, and received his posting to South East Africa under the command of General Smuts. On arrival he was appointed Medical Officer to the Second Rhodesian Regiment and sent immediately to the front.(4)

Traversing the unforgiving landscape, Brett Young shepherded his injured charges through the “tracts of rolling bush and plain over which the shadow of man’s spirit had never moved before…”.(5) During the advance to Makindu, surrounded on three sides by German forces and with hundreds of casualties in the care of the field ambulance, he penned ‘After Action’.(6)

Weakened by constant malaria Captain Brett Young was despatched back to England in January 1917. He turned to his writing publishing ‘Marching on Tanga', (7) ‘Five Degrees South’ and ‘Poems’.(8)

After the war the couple moved to Capri forging new friendships with literary neighbours, Compton McKenzie and D.H. Lawrence. Here Francis began the popular Mercian series including the acclaimed ‘Portrait of Clare’.(9) They returned to their native West Midlands until the end of WW2 when the breakdown of Francis’ health prompted a departure to South Africa. Brett Young died in Cape Town in 1954. His ashes were interred in Worcester Cathedral.

AFTER ACTION by Francis Brett Young

All through that day of battle the broken sound

Of shattering Maxim fire made mad the wood;

So that the low trees shuddered where they stood,

And echoes bellowed in the bush around:

But when, at last, the light of day was drowned,

That madness ceased... Ah, God, but it was good!

There in the reek of iodine and blood,

I flung me down upon the thorny ground.

So quiet was it, I might well have been lying

In a room I love, where the ivy cluster shakes

Its dew upon the lattice panes at even:

Where rusty ivory scatters from the dying

Jessamine blossom, and the musk-rose breaks

Her dusky bloom beneath a summer heaven.

Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.

Francis Brett Young

www.GoodReads.com

Notes:

1. Hall, Michael, Francis Brett Young, Poetry Wales Press Ltd, Bridgend (1997)

2. Swinton, W.E., Physicians in literature. Part VIII: yet to be discovered: Francis Brett Young, CMA Journal Vol 114 page 557 (20 March 1976)

3. Ibid page 557

4. Ibid Francis Brett Young (1997)

5. Brett Young, Francis, Marching on Tanga, William Collins, London (1918) page 182

6. Brett Young, Francis - After Action - Poems 1916-18, W Collins, Sons & Co Ltd, London (1919) page 50

7. Ibid Marching on Tanga (1918)

8. Brett Young, Francis, Five Degrees South, Martin Secker, London (1917) and Poems 1916-18, W Collins, Sons & Co Ltd, London (1919)

9. www.fbysociety.co.uk - James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1927 – Portrait of Clare