- Harold Lawton
Professor Harold Lawton (July 27 ,1899 –December 24 2005 ) was a scholar of French literature and, prior to his death, one of the last surviving veterans ofWorld War I in Britain.Lawton was born in
Burslem ,Stoke-on-Trent ,England . He volunteered for military service in 1916, enlisting withRoyal Welch Fusiliers before being transferred to theCheshire Regiment . Upon completing training, in 1917 he was posted to theWestern Front where he was transferred again, toThe East Yorkshire Regiment . The GermanSpring Offensive of 1918 included an assault upon Armentiere where his unit, the 1/4th Battalion the East Yorkshires, was posted. The Germans usedHutier tactics , wherestormtroopers aimed to infiltrate weak points in defences, bypassing strongly held front line areas. Troops with heavier weapons would then attack the isolated strongpoints. Lawton, with troops from theDurham Light Infantry , did indeed become isolated in a forward trench during the assault; when they ran out of ammunition and food after three days' fighting the German advances they surrendered. He was imprisoned at a PoW camp at the fortress of Lille and afterwards inMinden , Germany.After the war, he completed a
Master's degree in French at the University of Wales in Bangor, and received a doctorate in Latin and French from the Sorbonne in 1926. He became a lecturer, then a Professor of French at the University College Southampton. He later took the position of Professor of French, and was successively promoted within the university administration as Dean of the Faculty of Arts andPro Vice-Chancellor , at theUniversity of Sheffield . He published a "Handbook of French Renaissance Dramatic Theory" in 1950, and "Poems, Selected with Introduction and Notes" (on the work ofJoaquim du Bellay ) in 1961.During the Second World War, Lawton's name featured on a German list of people to be killed if Hitler invaded Britain.
In 1999, Lawton received the
Légion d'honneur of the French Republic, honouring his services in World War I.ee also
*
Veterans of the First World War who died in 2005 External links
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/26/db2601.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/12/26/ixportal.html Obituary from "
The Daily Telegraph "]
* Obituary from "The Times ",26 December 2005 , page 67
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
