Saturday, November 7, 2009

My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes


My hero Ernest Shephard 

by Richard Holmes


Richard Holmes
Saturday 7 November 2009

I
am not sure what he would make of it: disbelief, amusement, or irritation that I should single him out. But my hero is Ernest Shephard, who spent much of his time on the Western Front as a company sergeant major.

He was born in Lyme Regis in 1892, the son of a photographer who was to lose two of his three boys in the war. He enlisted in the part-time Special Reserve in 1909, and transferred to the regular 1st Battalion, the Dorset Regiment, later that year, becoming a lance-corporal in 1910, a corporal in 1913 and a sergeant in 1914. The fact that he was at home on recruiting duties probably saved his life, for 1st Dorsets suffered cruelly: in October the battalion lost 399 men, 148 killed, in a single action.
Sergeant Shephard joined 1st Dorsets in January 1915, and began to keep a diary. There is horror, such as his first experience of gas: "Men were caught by fumes and in dreadful agony, coughing and vomiting, rolling on the ground . . ." There is a serious interest in food: "We made a grand stew in a washing bucket . . ." And there is an abundance of that comradeship that made war tolerable. When Company Sergeant Major Shapton was killed, Shephard wrote: "In Sam I have lost my dearest chum. We were always together whenever possible. He was an Army Reserve man when war broke out, and came from Canada to rejoin. I shall never forget the afternoon C Company was cut up . . . When I got to his trench I found him crying. He had been working like a demon, digging his men out and attending to the wounded . . ."
Commissioned in November 1916, Shephard died in January 1917, commanding a company of 5th Dorsets. His last recorded act was characteristically professional. When he knew his position was hopeless, he warned the supporting company to fall back, so as not to be overwhelmed too. Ernest Shephard is buried on the Somme, in the AIF Burial Ground at Grass Lane, Flers, and I go to see him as often as I can.

THE GUARDIAN





2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016



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