Reginald William Bird

Rex died on 24 August 196 when, with his company Captain having been killed earlier that day, Rex took command but whilst taking forward a section of gunner’s he was killed instantly by shrapnel shell explosion. His body was never recovered and is commemorated on the Thieval Memorial.

WYCLIFFE AND THE WAR Rex William Bird

Capt. 1st Wiltshire Regiment, killed in the Battle of the Somme, August 24th, 1916.

To all who knew Wycliffe well during the ten years preceding the War, the tidings of the death of one boy came with a sense of personal loss and shock. If we seem to give special space to the following memoir, we do so because the one whom it concerns represented in all respects the school ideal, and there is inspiration for us all in the story of how he lived and died.

Rex William Bird came to Wycliffe, a little boy of 9!, in September, 1902, and remained until December, 1910. For nearly eight years he was at Haywardsfield, but during his last year at school he went to Springfield to help Mr. Arthur in founding a new order there. His school record for these years was one of which any boy might be proud. Before matriculating and becoming the head of the school he not only passed the Junior and Senior Cambridge with honours and many distinctions, but was first in England in each examination in different subjects. He obtained his 1st XI. cricket and football colours, and was one of the best players at centre half that the school has ever possessed. He became President of the Literary Society, in which he won the prize for excellence in speaking, and was a member of the first Wycliffe continental cycling party. But such things are of small account compared with character and influence, and in these Rex Bird excelled. He was chosen by the boys of Haywardsfield to receive the House Prize for gendemanliness and kindness, and his school-fellows also elected him to fill the most honourable office that can come to any Wycliffe boy, that of President of the League.

On leaving school he entered his father’s office, where he showed every promise of becoming an architect of exceptional ability, while in his leisure time he helped to start a Scout Troop for the boys of Midsomer Norton, and achieved much quiet useful work. None can have loved home and parents more than he did, or been more wholly devoted to younger brothers and sisters.

When he was a big boy at school, possessing abundant interests there, he told the writer that he felt the wrench of parting from home more with every passing term, yet when war broke out he did not doubt for a moment as to where his own or his country’s duty lay. He enlisted as a private in the 12th Battalion of the Gloucesters (Bristol’s Own), a few weeks after hostilities began, and later in the autumn of 1914 he received a commission in the Ist Wiltshire Regiment. He went out to the front in May, 1915, and was slightly wounded in the Ypres salient in September of that year, but after a few weeks he was back again in the firing line. He became machine gun officer to his regiment, and rose to the rank of Captain in this, one of the most famous of the old regimental battalions of the line. Many extracts from his letters appear elsewhere, and his tribute to the men is but another proof that those who are noble see nobility in all about them.

” They never quarrel, you never hear an unkind word, they are always ready to share their good fortune with others, and willing, too, to take a share of another’s burden if theirs is not so great.

However trying the conditions they do not grumble, but cheerfully push on, doing their best. Can you wonder that my admiration for our men amounts to more than respect, almost to reverence and affection, and that my sympathy for them is great.”

And again:

“They are not merely good, they are splendid-so kindly, so patient, so unselfish. To know what I know would be a revelation to some of the folks at home.”

When the new machine-gun corps was formed at the front Capt. Rex Bird had the choice of retaining his position and promotion and of losing his men, or of going with them to their new duties and reverting to his former rank. He did not hesitate. “Position does not matter,” he wrote, “I could not leave my men.” He had passed through the first battle of the Somme, though his Brigade suffered heavily.

On August 24th the Brigade was ordered up to consolidate a position just captured. We tell what happened afterwards in the words of his servant and of brother officers :

” He was working like two men when he was killed, placing guns in a captured trench and finding reinforcements and ammunition for them.

“I am sure he knew it was going to happen, for just after he had his lunch he was so very quiet. I asked him if he was not well, for being so used to him I could not help noticing it. He said, am quite well, Chalk, but there is something. I do not know what it is.’ How he worked that terrible day! If any man ever earned the V.C., he did! At ten minutes past midnight he had just wished me good-night and told me to get some sleep, when a shrapnel shell came over and a piece struck him in the right temple.

” He was buried in the old German trench, formerly known as the Leipzig Salient, half a mile south of Thieval village. His former C.O. in the 1st Wilts. and many others lie close beside him. It is a spot where the regiment has made history, and none can ask for finer company in death.”

In the pocket of his Colonel, who was also killed, they afterwards found a written recommendation of Rex for the D.S.O. Such is the brief record of a noble life and a great death, but all who knew Rex Bird will feel that these words hardly convey that which one could most wish to say. He was not only a type of the English school boy and gentleman at his best, but there was something about him far more rare-an utter holiness which made him like his Master and the few great souls who have followed wholly in the Master’s steps.

When he was only four years old his mother once expressed a doubt as to whether he had answered a question truly. He drew himself up proudly and said: “I am a true boy, Mum,” and neither his parents nor anyone who looked on him ever doubted him again.

Not many of us would dare to say, as he did in the tender letter of gratitude and affection which he left to be posted to his mother and father, should he fall in action:

“There is nothing I have ever done or thought that is not known to you, and you have the comfort of knowing, as I have, that my life has been given in the great cause of righteousness,… Your affection has been my greatest joy and help throughout my life, nor could anyone value a Mother’s and a Father’s love more than I have yours. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done for me. God bless you and be with you both. Au revoir.”

Few were better able to form a true estimate of him than Dr. Arthur, in whose house he was for nearly eight years. When Rex was still a schoolboy, Dr. Arthur, in writing to Mr. Bird, could say :

“I never think of the young man who had kept all the commandments from his youth up, or read how’ Jesus looking upon him loved him,’ without associating these words with your son Rex.”

It is not many terms ago that in an address at evening prayers Dr. Arthur spoke from this text. Some people, he said, may think that the young man must have been lacking in spirit, but he had himself known a boy who during eight years’ residence at Wycliffe had never once needed punishment or reproof, yet this boy was magnificent on the football field, his response to his country’s call had been instant and eager, and his school- fellows, his officers and his men alike respected him for his fearless courage, energy and cheerfulness.

When the news of his death reached him, Dr. Arthur wrote:

“I loved Rex from the first hour I ever saw him.”

In the school Chapel there now stands a memorial dedicated

” in reverent and loving memory of Rex W. Bird,”

and none who knew the lad can wonder at Dr. Arthur’s choice of words.

In closing this brief memoir we quote from some other tributes to his memory, to show how universal was the feeling of affection and reverence which he inspired. The first are from officers and men at the front, though unfortunately his own Colonel and Captain were killed earlier in the day. A Captain writes:

” He was one of the coolest and most gallant men that I have met. His splendid courage has inspired me on hundreds of occasions when things were blue.”

A Lieutenant writes :

” His death has been the hardest blow I have yet had in the war.

We had all grown very much attached to him, and he was by far the finest officer in the company, and splendidly fearless.”

Another Captain writes :

” His men were always his first consideration, and they were devoted to him.”

And one of the men, his own faithful servant, says and we give the words just as he wrote them:

“It was a great blow to all his men. You always found him the same, no matter how trying things were, and his first thought was for others before himself. You can quite understand our feelings for a brave and good officer. There was no man I liked better than I did him. I only wish I could have done something to save his life. I would have given my own life to save his, for only those who knew him as I did, knew what a splendid gentleman he was. The men are always talking of him and saying, If only we had Mr.

Bird back again we should fear nothing.’ He was loved by all. His first thought was for his men’s comfort. I am proud that I pleased him in what did for him, for he was always the gentleman.”

And finally we give some extracts from the letters of those who knew him at school. An o.w. gunner in France, when he read of his death, wrote to his parents thus:

“The great tribute in the papers is true in every word. Rex was a fine fellow indeed, not only an athlete and a scholar, but a pure, God-fearing boy.”

An officer who knew him well, not only at school, but as a private in the ranks in the first days of the war, writes from a distant field of operations :

“I think he perfectly represented the Wycliffe ideal of what an Old Boy and an Englishman should be.”

One who was a small boy at Wycliffe when Rex Bird was ao older boy wrote :

” He was the only boy I knew during six years at school who was never criticised by either old or young, and found wanting. He was the most respected Senior and the most looked-up-to boy I ever knew. It was plain to me that he was a perfect type of the true English gentleman. His manliness, honesty and purity may well be set as a model to any being upon earth.”

And another simply says :

“It was owing to him and his goodness to me that I partly straightened out at the end of my school days the mess that I made at the beginning.”

Such tributes might be multiplied, but as summing them up we will give that of our Headmaster and his friend, and happy are the boys and men of whom such words can be justly written:

“No boy or man who ever lived was better fitted to face death than Rex. During his eight years at Wycliffe he was always the same brave, true and noble boy. During all my association with him, at school and in holidays, at home and everywhere, I never knew him to say an unkind or unclean word, or do a selfish or ungenerous act. He was almost my ideal both as boy and man. For such as Rex death holds no fears at all. His was a free-will offering of the last full measure of devotion in the deathless cause of right.”

Father – William F Bird (b. 1852 – after 1916)

(Taken from the Town Hall Conservation Management Plan 2015, Donald Insall Associates)

W.F. Bird was the Surveyor and Architect to the Midsomer Norton Urban District Council in and around 1902. He was almost certainly responsible for the design of the conversion work done to the Town Hall in 1903-6. Born in 1852 at Timsbury, William Bird was the son of a coal miner. Nothing is known of his education. He was described as a civil engineer and surveyor (Kelly’s Directory, 1902) and practiced in business at the Island, Midsomer Norton.

He designed Midsomer Norton Board School (now primary school) around 1900, and a Board School at Station Road, Clutton built in 1902-4 (now Clutton Primary School). He was responsible for a new school attached to High Littleton Methodist chapel (1896-7) and for renovations to the chapel in 1898.

He was the engineer for a reservoir scheme near Downside Abbey (1905) which supplied water to the parishes of Binegar, Ashwick, Gurney Slade, Emborow, Midsomer Norton, Chilcompton, Farrington Gurney, and Paulton.

He was also a Methodist; the death of one of his sons in the First World War was reported in the United Methodist journal in 1916. Bird was a member of the Society of Architects in 1911 when he was reported to have repaired Englishcombe schools near Bath.

Bird’s wife was a member of the Ladies Committee of Clutton Union workhouse in 1908, typifying the public service mentality of middle-class Nonconformists.

Bird’s style, if he had one, was typically Edwardian and provincial, solid but undistinguished, and he has been almost entirely omitted from local histories.