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Major Bevil Bryan Quiller-Couch
MC (12 October 1890 – 6 February 1919) was a decorated British Army officer who served continuously in Flanders and France from August 1914 to 1918. He was the son of the Cornish writer,
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (; 21 November 186312 May 1944) was a British writer who published using the pseudonym Q. Although a prolific novelist, he is remembered mainly for the monumental publication '' The Oxford Book of English Verse 1 ...
of
Fowey, Cornwall. He was engaged to the
war poet
A war poet is a poet who participates in a war and writes about their experiences, or a non-combatant who writes poems about war. While the term is applied especially to those who served during the First World War, the term can be applied to a p ...
,
May Wedderburn Cannan
May Wedderburn Cannan (14 October 1893 – 11 December 1973) was a British poet who was active in World War I.
Biography
Early life
May was the second of three daughters of Charles Cannan, Dean of Trinity College, Oxford (he was in charge at ...
, but he died before they could be married. A book of his letters was published in 2002. The book was also made into a radio play by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
.
Education
He attended
Trinity College, Oxford
(That which you wish to be secret, tell to nobody)
, named_for = The Holy Trinity
, established =
, sister_college = Churchill College, Cambridge
, president = Dame Hilary Boulding
, location = Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BH
, coordinates ...
in 1908 where he was captain of his College VIII rowing crew. He won the University Pairs in 1912 and 1913. He also rowed in the final for the Goblets at the
Henley Royal Regatta. While he was at Oxford, he joined the Officer Training Corps and joined the Special Reserve.
War service
His war service started in August 1914 where he served with the
Royal Field Artillery at
Mons and Aisne. He was involved in the transportation of ammunition to the gun batteries. He saw action at the
First Battle of Ypres
The First Battle of Ypres (french: Première Bataille des Flandres; german: Erste Flandernschlacht – was a battle of the First World War, fought on the Western Front around Ypres, in West Flanders, Belgium. The battle was part of the Firs ...
. He later saw action at
Festubert
Festubert is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France. The village was on the Western Front during the First World War and was largely destroyed in the May 1915 Battle of Festubert.
Geography
A farming v ...
and in May 1915 he was the Orderly Officer responsible for writing the regimental war diary. By 1916, he was on the Somme and in August that year he was promoted to acting major. In September 1917, he was wounded during the
Third Battle of Ypres
The Third Battle of Ypres (german: link=no, Dritte Flandernschlacht; french: link=no, Troisième Bataille des Flandres; nl, Derde Slag om Ieper), also known as the Battle of Passchendaele (), was a campaign of the First World War, fought by t ...
. He was later involved at
Cambrai and, by January 1918, went on leave back to England. Towards the end of the war, Quiller-Couch led his battery into action at Noyelles. He last saw action in November 1918 before joining the reserve forces at Villers Pol.
Citation
Death
Quiller-Couch survived the war only to die at
Langerwehe, near
Düren in Germany, on 6 February 1919 during the
Spanish flu
The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case wa ...
pandemic. He was buried in the
Southern Cemetery at
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
in Germany.
[Find A Grave Memorial# 12748001] Although he died after the end of the war, his name is recorded on the war memorial at Fowey Church.
Legacy
A book by
Charlotte Pullein-Thompson called ''The Tears of War'' was published in 2000 by Cavalier Books. It is a compilation of Quiller-Couch's love letters sent to his fiancée and poems she sent to him.
Cavalier Books
/ref> In 2002, BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
presented a dramatised version of ''The Tears of War'' as the afternoon play on Armistice Day
Armistice Day, later known as Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth and Veterans Day in the United States, is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, Fran ...
. The part of Quiller-Couch was played by the actor James Purefoy
James Brian Mark Purefoy (born 3 June 1964) is an English actor. He played Mark Antony in the HBO series ''Rome'', Nick Jenkins in ''A Dance to the Music of Time'', college professor turned serial killer Joe Carroll in the series ''The Followin ...
.BBC Genome Project Radio Times 1923 - 2009
/ref>
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quiller-Couch, Bevil
1890 births
1919 deaths
British Army personnel of World War I
Recipients of the Military Cross
Royal Field Artillery officers
Deaths from Spanish flu
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
People from Fowey
People educated at Winchester College
British letter writers
20th-century letter writers