Have you ever looked at the Memorial Park Gates?
You will see a plaque with a bronze figure of a First World War Soldier on it. This park is dedicated to the memory of Fleetwood’s war dead. At the centre of the park is a war memorial with a symbolic figure of Peace, holding the flame of freedom and looking towards the memorial gateway.
The second inscription on the round column of the memorial is a line from the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae:
To you from failing hands we throw / The torch: be yours to hold it high
The land you are standing on was bought by the Fleetwood Heroes Fund Committee in 1921 for £1400.11. The designers of the Park were part of the Garden City Movement which believed in parks, sports grounds, flower gardens, allotments, and outdoor amenities for everyone. Tennis courts were an important part of the design, although they were dug up to grow food during the Second World War. All the paths radiate out from this site, reflecting the layout of Fleetwood itself. In 2013, Memorial Park underwent a huge restoration.
The large trees along Memorial Avenue were originally planted by the children of the men of Fleetwood who had been killed in action. Unfortunately many of these trees have been replaced after 85 years due to disease. Many men from Fleetwood joined the Royal Navy, the merchant marines who kept the food supplies flowing, or the coastguards.
Fleetwood was an important training centre for the Lancashire Regiments and others during the First World War. The present Golf Course in Fleetwood was a rifle range. The Poet Wilfred Owen was stationed here for three months in 1915 to run the range – he was a first class shot.
His war experiences turned him from enthusiast to an Anti -War poet.
Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ is Latin for ‘How sweet and good it is to die for one’s country’.
