Charles Hamilton Sorley

Though his creative output was cut tragically short Charles Hamilton Sorely is among the most acclaimed of the Great War Poets. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland he was educated first at Marlborough College, and then briefly at the University of Jena. It was there his studies were interrupted in August, 1914 by the outbreak of the First World War. After leaving Germany he enlisted in the Suffolk Regiment and was deployed to the Western Front as a lieutenant May, 1915. He was promoted to captain three months later and during the Battle of Loos was felled by a sniper's bullet. His final sonnet: "When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead" was discovered in his kit after his death, and was published posthumously with his other completed work.Poet Laureate John Masefield considered him the greatest poetical loss of the war. Robert Graves wrote a poem in tribute to him entitled: "Sorely's Weather." In 1986 Sorley was commemorated along with 15 other poets of the Great War by a plaque bearing his name in Westminster Abbey.