PRIVATE LYELL POCOCK
15TH AUGUST 1916 AGE 17
BURIED: BECOURT MILITARY CEMETERY, BECORDEL-BECOURT, FRANCE
This is surely no dream, the vision of your seventeen-year-old son lying wounded on the battlefield, calling in vain for help, is the stuff of nightmares not dreams. Lyell Pocock was wounded on 15 October during the Battle of Pozieres and died the same day. His parents never instituted a Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau search so there is no record of the circumstances of his death. Mr and Mr James Pocock were haunted by their imaginings and managed to find the words of a song to represent them.
'When this Cruel War is Over', written in 1862 and dedicated to "Sorrowing hearts at home", was the most popular song of the American Civil War whether with Unionists or Confederates. Lyell Pocock's inscription is an adaptation of the second and third verses:
When the summer breeze is sighing, mournfully along,
Or when autumn leaves are falling, sadly breathes the song.
Oft in dreams I see thee lying on the battle plain,
Lonely, wounded, even dying, calling but in vain.
If amid the din of battle, nobly you should fall,
Far away from those who love you, none to hear you call -
Who would whisper words of comfort, who would soothe your pain?
Ah! the many cruel fancies, ever in my brain.
Whilst the announcements of his death in the local Bendigo papers describe Lyell as 18, James Pocock was very precise when he filled in the circular for his son's entry on the Roll of Honour of Australia: his son was seventeen and six months. This means that he was sixteen and five months when he enlisted in September 1915, and still sixteen when he embarked from Australia on 25 January 1916.