MASTER AND PUPILS: JAMES YATES, PHILIP STOTT, STANLEY HAWKESWORTH.
The St Bees School Roll of Honour for the Great War was compiled by W.A. Aldous MA. It contains the names of one hundred and eighty Old Boys and four masters all of whom gave their lives and in whose memory stands the War Memorial overlooking the school playing fields. The list is alphabetical and the very last name is Second Lieutenant J.S. Yates, who was a master at the school from 1912 until 1915. Earlier on the list is Second Lieutenant P.H. Stott, who was a pupil from 1910 until 1915 and had been taught Latin by James Yates. Even further back is Lieutenant F.H.S. Hawkesworth, a pupil from 1910 until 1913, also taught by James Yates.
Philip Harle Stott - scholar, Head of School, soldier. Philip was one of the eight boys who carved their names on paneling in the Foundation dining room and who later fell in the Great War. Born in 1897 he was the eldest son of the Rev. H.R. Stott of Beckwithshaw Vicarage near Harrogate. He had been sent to a preparatory school at Sedbergh before receiving a scholarship to St Bees School in 1910.
Rising to become House prefect and then Head of School, Philip’s academic prowess saw him gain an Exhibition at Merton College, Oxford. He seemed set for a brilliant career. However, at the age of only nineteen Philip put his academic career on hold to gain a commission as a Second Lieutenant and play his part in the Great War. He joined the 18th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Own), a battalion better known as ‘The Bradford Pals’, and after further training was sent out to France on March 6th 1917. The Harrogate Advertiser in its edition of 11th May 1918 published an article which reported Philip as missing following action in the Arras area.
The following week the same newspaper confirmed that his death had taken place on 25th April. He had not quite reached his twenty-first birthday and had been in action for thirteen months. Philip's body was never recovered and so he is remembered on the Tyne Cot Memorial panels and is included on a plaque in Beckwithshaw church. At St Bees School he is not only recorded in the Roll of Honour but also on the chapel's memorial plaque for the fallen.
James Stanley Yates - scholar, schoolmaster, soldier, poet. The Yates’ family home was in Esher, Surrey, but at the age of fourteen James was sent as a boarder to the King’s School Canterbury where he gained a distinction in Latin. He went on to Hertford College, Oxford, where he studied English Literature and Latin. During this time at Oxford he served as an enthusiastic cadet in the University’s Officer Training Corps. After graduating in 1912, James took up a post at St Bees School teaching Latin and being assistant housemaster of School House. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the school’s OTC and henceforth played a leading role in its activities. In February 1915 he successfully applied for a commission in the Special Reserve of Officers.
Hailing from Surrey, James looked to serve in a regiment in the south-east and was admitted as a Second Lieutenant in the Third Battalion Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment) and sent over to France. By the beginning of October 1915 the battalion found itself at Loos, and on the 8th October a platoon was ordered to attack an artillery trench occupied by the Germans. The attack proved a costly failure and a retreat was ordered, but only after three quarters of the men were killed or wounded. One of the fallen was James. Over the following days interviews were undertaken to establish exactly why things had gone so wrong. Three survivors who had been with James in the assault were closely questioned and it was established that James had been shot in the forehead by a machine gun whilst standing on the edge of the enemy trench. With his body not being recovered, James Yates is remembered on Panel 95 of the Loos Memorial. He is also remembered in the school’s Roll of Honour and on the chapel’s memorial plaque for the four masters who fell.
James was an accomplished poet and some of his poems were published firstly in Oxford University’s magazine Centaurian and later in the St Bees School magazines. One relates to LIEUTENANT F.H.S. HAWKESWORTH whose death on 25th January 1915 at the age of twenty was reported in the school's spring bulletin: ‘It was a dreadful shock to hear that Stanley Hawkesworth has been killed. He had been so recently amongst us and was so well known, and so endeared, not only to the boys of his own day, but also to those who have only known him as an 'Old Boy', that he seems to have just stepped out of the School into the fighting line, when he fell.................... He died, as he would have wished, in saving others; and he had lived in serving others. There is much to remember - can we, indeed forget anything in that short life; his frankness and simplicity, his gentleness and kindness, his patriotism and enthusiasm for life in all its forms - these will live in our memories and our affections. But what we shall remember most of all - what won the passionate devotion of his schoolfellows- was his entire unselfishness. He would assiduously coach a Junior Set; he was a friend of the loneliest, most homesick new boy; with his own fine scorn of wrong, he was the first to sympathize with the wrongdoer, and help him to better things. He was destined for the Foreign Mission field, where his courage, his devotion to duty, and his deep, sane religious feeling, would have found their fullest scope. We may say, without cant, that his missionary life had already begun. And in the full glow of it he passed to the other side.’ With Stanley Hawkesworth having been one of his former pupils James Yates felt driven to present his own tribute in poetic form:
F.H.S.H. Fallen! And we who thought to see him rise Full upon life, are left to feel the pain. And turn each day to count the loss again And fear to find him in each other's eyes. Yet was he one who thought it not a prize To live himself, if others might not reign With him upon the throne; he would distain To exchange for life the Death that never dies. Nor is he dead; his spirit was the best And sweetest part of him, and is alive To reason with our grief and bid us smile. Or, if we needs must weep for him awhile, He will stand patient by, then bid us strive - Be good, be brave, leaving to God the rest                                                                 J.S.Y.	Lieutenant F. H. S. Hawkesworth
James had asked his brother that should he not survive the war, that his poems be brought together. This was done and in 1919 they were published as ‘War Lyrics’. A preface to the book was written by H. A. P. Sawyer. It read: ‘He wished to be remembered at St. Bees not just as a schoolmaster and soldier but as a friend. And it is as a friend that we will remember him at St. Bees. No man, certainly no schoolmaster, ever deserved the title Friend more than he did. Every boy that came into his form, still more every boy who entered School House, discovered at once that he had a friend in Mr Yates. He was unsparing of himself; he was accessible to all; boys came into his room without embarrassment, and he met them all with the same simplicity and freedom. His affection for St. Bees was wonderful. He displayed this in a hundred ways; in his classroom; in his work for the library; in his keenness for the O.T.C.; in his enthusiasm with which he coached School House Juniors to victory. He gladly made his sacrifice for his Country. His face glowed as he spoke of the possibilities of dying for it. But what he did feel most was leaving St. Bees. Every letter from the Front told the same story: ‘Life here’, he once wrote, ‘is very interesting, but it is not the real thing. My life is still being lived at St. Bees.’ James’ final letter and accompanying poem from the Front read: ‘Behold a miracle; my joy which was seized and torn away is returned. I find myself happy and ready for all that God should require of me. One sweet joy, granted in a little moment, came as I surrendered my fate happily to His calling in return for His kind love. Here I give a picture of what I feel like in these days: I am enjoying my joy, Golden without alloy. Seven times in fires of disappointment tried. Beautiful, rarified, I have a jewel now which nothing can destroy Now I can face the pain Now I am strong again It was not Death I feared, it was not War. These I have faced before. Take me and try me God, Thou will not try in vain. How can I soonest fight, Fearless and face the Night? For I have learnt to love my life and now I long to pay my vow. To see the Sword and the Cross, And thank Thee for the sight. George C. Robson (FN 57-64)

 

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