Walter Lyon

Walter Scott Stuart Lyon (Trevelyan 1887 – 8 May 1915)

Son of Walter F. K. and Isabella R. Lyon, of Tantallon Lodge, North Berwick.

One of the war poets. He was one of five brothers from North Berwick, Scotland, three of whom were killed in the war and one died at Haileybury. Walter went to Balliol College, Oxford and a career as a Scottish Advocate.

He volunteered for the 9th Battalion Royal Scots before the war and was sent to Belgium in February 1915, to the trenches near Glencose Wood outside Ypres. He served as a lieutenant. Soon after he wrote two poems, Easter at Ypres and Lines Written in a Fire Trench. A few weeks later while the Second Battle of Ypres was at its fiercest, he wrote two more poems, On a Grave in a Trench, which he inscribed "English killed for Patrie", and I Tracked a Dead Man Down a Trench.

In early May Walter Lyon and the Royal Scots were in dugouts in Potijze Wood near the Menin Road, just 200 yards from the firing line. The shelling was so fierce that trees were torn up by the roots and the tops sliced by shrapnel. The stream of wounded from the wood was continuous and Walter Lyon was among the dead. A collection of his poems was published in 1916 and two are included in an anthology of Public School War Poetry called "A Deep Cry" published in 1993.

No known grave. Name listed on the Menin Gate in Ypres, panel 11.