HARRY MIDGELEY, Belfast. Thoughts from Flanders. ‘In Remembrance of all those who fell, And

HARRY MIDGELEY, Belfast. Thoughts from Flanders. ‘In Remembrance of all those who fell, And those who mourn their loss’. Printed [for the author] by E.H. Thornton, 109 Donegall Street, Belfast. [1924]. This copy signed and inscribed by the author, ‘To my friend, Mr. John A. Brown / With all good wishes / Harry Midgeley’. 16mo, 47 pp, stapled in buckram gilt, a few page corners turned or torn but a very good copy of a scarce book. COPAC records only two copies, at Queens University and the Imperial War Museum.Harry Midgeley [1892-1957] served in the British Army in Flanders, and was wounded and gassed. After the war he became Secretary of the Northern Ireland Labour Party. In 1933 he was elected to Parliament at Stormont, and spoke in favour of Republican Spain. During the Second World War he held a Ministerial post at Stormont, and later joined the Unionist Party and the Orange Order - a far cry from his youthful ideals.His poetry, though unpolished, is not without merit. The poem titled ‘Shot at Dawn’, in memory of a shell-shocked boy executed for desertion, is worth attention. ‘He was only a boy with golden hair / Scarce out of his teens, and yet / I know the men who served out there / “His Murder” will not forget.’