The Thin Blue Line - Site Guide

I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the Ring

In summer time and on the Downs how larks and linnets sing

High in the sun. The wind comes off the sea, and oh the air!

I never knew till now that life in old days was so fair.

But now I know it in this filthy rat infested ditch

Where every shell must kill or spare, and God alone knows when.

And I am made a beast of prey and this is my lair.

My God I never knew till now that those days were so fair.

And we shall assault in half an hour and it's a silly thing

I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the Ring.

Written by John Stanley Purvis - Philip Johnson 5th Battalion

Yorkshire Regiment on 2nd Dec 1915 in a trench behind the Somme

This stone was placed in the lane by the people of Steyning

In the year 2000 AD in celebration of their inheritance

The author Lt. John Stanley Purvis, who wrote under the pseudonym of Philip Johnson, was invalided out of the army having been wounded during the Battle of the Somme. Following the war he returned to Cranleigh School in Surrey where he had previously taught. He then took holy orders and at the age of 50 he settled in York. Here he gained an international reputation as the translator of the York Mystery Plays and was awarded the OBE for work on the York Minster archives. He died in 1968.

The mystery is how Purvis came to write the poem sitting in a trench waiting to 'go over the top' when, according to their official history, the 5th Battalion had been at rest from 12th November to 19th December in billets near Outtersteene, some two and a half miles from Bailleul.

Whatever the truth the Regiment lost 54 Officers and 7,054 men during the war, the last known officially recorded being Pte 41832 Ifar Wyn Roberts, from Bangor, who died as a result of his wounds on 23rd July 1919. He is buried in Cae Athraw Calvanistic Chapelyard, Carnarvonshire.

Twelve Victoria Crosses were awarded to the Regiment during their service in France and Flanders.

Edmund Blunden, who served with the Royal Sussex Regiment, wrote in his book Undertones of War, 'For a fortnight or so I had been in charge of a squad of men nominally recovered from wounds and awaiting their next migration. It had been my happiness to march them out to a place at once as sequestered and sunny as I could find, overlooking the lazy Adur, and there to let them bask on the grass, and tell their tales, and be peaceful.' Later he remembers the area again when, 'there, sad-smiling, waving hands and welcoming, were two or three of the convalescent squad who had been mine so briefly on the April slopes opposite Lancing.'