KENNINGTON - Kent Fallen

HAYNES A.J
Gunner 9162 Arthur James HAYNES. “A” Battery, 71 st Brigade, Royal Field Artillery (RFA).
Died Friday 16 th April 1915 aged 45 years. Born Wye. Enlisted Ashford. Resided Kennington. Son
of John and Katherine Mary Haynes of Swinford, Leicestershire. Husband of Amy Mary Haynes
of Wye, Kent. Buried in Bulford Church Cemetery, Wiltshire. Grave reference 4.I.9.
In 1918 71 st Brigade RFA was a regular army unit attached to the 15 th Division.
JENKINS A.L
Lieutenant Arthur Lewis JENKINS. A Home Defence Squadron, Royal Flying Corps (RFC).
Formerly 4 th Battalion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry (DCLI). Killed whilst flying on 31 st
December 1917 aged 25 years. Son of Sir John Lewis Jenkins KCSI, ICS, and Lady Jenkins of
Ulley Farm, Ulley Road, Kennington, Ashford, Kent. Buried in the Richmond Cemetery, Surrey.
Grave reference M.1497.
Arthur is now a well known Great War poet. His book of poems “Folorn Adventurer’s” was
published in 1916 by Sidgwick and Jackson. The forward in his book was by Frank Fletcher. The
eldest son of Sir John Lewis Jenkins, K.C.S.I, I.C.S, Arthur had hoped to enter the Indian Civil
Service like his father. Educated at Balliol with a classical scholarship, Arthur volunteered for
service in the DCLI as a Leiutenant in December 1914. He served in India for a year and then
went to Aden in charge of a machine gun section. In 1915 Arthur moved with his battalion to
Palestine. In January 1917 Arthur was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps and went to
Egypt to learn how to fly. He returned to England and while serving in a home defence squadron
was killed in a tragic flying accident. Many of his poems can still be found in a book called
“Remembrance” (Soldier Poets who have fallen in the war) by A. St. John Adcock now republished
by the Naval and Military Press (NMP). Pages 201-207.
Happy Warriors (a tribute to his friends who fell in Palestine 1915)
Surely they sleep content, our valient dead,
Fallen untimely in the savage of strife:
They have but followed whither duty led,
To find a fuller life.
Who, then, are we to grudge the bitter price
Of this our land inviolate through the years,
Or mar the splendour of their sacrifice
That is too high for tears…
God grant we fail not at the test – that when
We take, mayhap, our places in the fray,
Come life, come death, we quit ourselves like men,
The peers of such as they.
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