Alexander James Mann, known as “Hamish”, was born in 1896 in Broughty Ferry, near Dundee. He later moved to Edinburgh, where he studied at George Watson’s College. The outbreak of World War One, however, would disrupt his youthful dreams to be a writer and actor.
Initially, Mann could not enlist due to a heart condition. Instead, he volunteered at the Craigleith Military Hospital, where he co-edited the Craigleith Hospital Chronicle. When medical restrictions were loosened in 1915, Mann became a Second Lieutenant and travelled to France.
In his time in the trenches, Mann composed many works of poetry: lyrical, youthful musings on the realities of war, life, and nature. Mann’s poetic voice is poignantly aware of the fragility of life, with life in the trenches constantly surrounded by the “whir of aeroplanes high overhead” (in “A Memory”). His life was tragically cut short in the 1917 Battle of Arras, just 5 days after his twenty-first birthday. Mann, in “Weep Not For Me”, saw himself as “but one ‘mongst countless finer men”, one of the thousands of young men met with a fate similar to himself.
Though he never lived to see his work published, Mann’s poetry was gathered by his parents and published in 1918 in A Subaltern’s Musings. Since then, his collection has been passed down through generations of his family. On 5 February, his poems, alongside photos, drawings, short stories, plays, and letters, were auctioned by Edinburgh-based Lyon and Turnbull. They were valued between £3,000 and £4,000.
In his poem “Zenith”, Mann writes “Of War, of cataclysmal woe, and tears”. Poetry has the power to freeze a moment in time, preserving feelings and experiences that would otherwise be lost. Now, Hamish Mann can proudly sit alongside Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in the literary canon.
Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash