page_title: Edward Thomas (poet)
section_title: War service
hierarchical_section_title: Edward Thomas (poet) / Life and career / War service
caption_attribution_description: English: Edward Thomas' memorial stone on a hillside near Steep. Suzanne Knights, my photo, July 2006
context_page_description: Philip Edward Thomas was a British poet, essayist, and novelist. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences, and his career in poetry only came after he had already been a successful writer and literary critic. In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army to fight in the First World War and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.
  A Study Centre dedicated to Thomas is located at Petersfield Museum in Hampshire.
context_section_description: Thomas enlisted in the Artists Rifles in July 1915, despite being a mature married man who could have avoided enlisting.  He was unintentionally influenced in this decision by his friend Frost, who had returned to the U.S. but sent Thomas an advance copy of "The Road Not Taken". The poem was intended by Frost as a gentle mocking of indecision, particularly the indecision that Thomas had shown on their many walks together; however, most audiences took the poem more seriously than Frost intended, and Thomas similarly took it seriously and personally, and it provided the last straw in Thomas' decision to enlist.
  Thomas was promoted to corporal, and in November 1916 was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery as a second lieutenant. He was killed in action soon after he arrived in France at Arras on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917. To spare the feelings of his widow Helen, she was told the fiction of a "bloodless death" i.e. that Thomas was killed by the concussive blast wave of one of the last shells fired as he stood to light his pipe and that there was no mark on his body. However, a letter from his commanding officer Franklin Lushington written in 1936 (and discovered many years later in an American archive) states that in reality the cause of Thomas's death was being "shot clean through the chest". W. H. Davies was devastated by the death and his commemorative poem "Killed In Action (Edward Thomas)" was included in Davies's 1918 collection "Raptures".
  Thomas is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Agny in France (Row C, Grave 43).
caption: His memorial stone near Steep
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