Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/246

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198
For Remembrance

I ring at the bell, give the firm hand to Len,
And I 'm fast in your arms and home again!

It might well have stood as a snapshot of his home-coming from France, but he was not to return from there. On 20th April, he was in a dug-out in the lines that had been newly captured from the enemy when a German shell thundered at the entrance and he was instantly killed.

Born in the same year as Flower, Eric Fitzwater Wilkinson embarked for France early in 1915 as a lieutenant in the Leeds Rifles, and within a few months won the M.C. for bringing in wounded under fire. He was educated at Dorchester and Ilkley Grammar Schools and, having gained scholarships, went to Leeds University for a three years' engineering course, and joined the O.T.C. there. Presently, he became a junior master in his old school at Ilkley, and his contributions of verse, serious and humorous, to the school magazine intimate that his bent was not exclusively towards engineering. Having passed his intermediate B.A. (London) examination with honours, he was pre-