https://soundcloud.com/gareth-calway/1aafa1f7-32e8-40a7-9cf3-b8f93b0c5e51
A new recording for the 80th anniversary of VE Day of this remembrance anthem for a "brave, loving and unselfish" youth late of this parish.
Flight Sergeant Pilot Lancelot Percival Williamson, 1920-1945, died on Friday July 13 1945 after five years service in the RAF fighting Fascism on two major fronts of the Second World War, aged 25. He joined the RAF in 1939, aged 19. He was agonisingly close to surviving the entire war when he died in a plane crash on a solo training flight above Little Eaton in Derbyshire just after his last home leave in Norfolk.
Lancelot 'Percy' Williamson is the last name on the unbelievably long roll call of Sedgeford war dead from two world wars called out (across the village green where we live) every Remembrance Sunday. My ear was struck by the Arthurian resonances, not just Sir Lancelot the greatest knight but Percival the purest (and finder of the Holy Grail). Maz and I have the honour in absentia familias of tending his grave at Fring and also of occasionally remembering him at the church with this song or the poem.
He hailed from Eaton Farm Sedgeford, North West Norfolk. went to school in Fring, sang in Heacham church choir, played cricket for Sedgeford a week before his death and is buried next to the small grave of his 'older' (10 year old) brother at Fring All Saints.
The tune is a traditional folk song about a good young man cut down in his prime. The aircraft you hear at the end of this film was flying over as we finished recording so we left the mikes open. The same thing happened when I was recording the poem in the graveyard.
I landed a crocked plane, when still just a fitter,
5 years derring-done, never shot down in flames,
In a cloud of unknowing, I flew for the sunrise
And came down to Earth but lived up to my names.
Six knights of Logres to carry my coffin,
Six Logres ladies to walk by my side,
Through hellfire and slaughter to a wheatfield of poppies
And a home hedge on Friday the 13th of July.
Beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only,
Play up the dead march as we go along
And bring me to Fring All Saints and lay me down easy,
I lived in the free air that breathes through this song.
Instrumental break
Repeat first verse.
Lyric © Gareth Calway 2023
from PEACOCK'S TALES (The Sapphire Wedding Album) peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/peaco…dding-album
Percy's gravestone has recently been cleaned and made much more legible, as you will see in the final frame of the film (see link below). Our thanks to Carol Townsend of the Commonwealth Graves Commission who carried out that excellent work as well as to Tim Snelling Sedgeford village historian whose diligent research gave us many of the images and press cuttings you see on the film and which gave us the material for our song. You can also watch the music video on YouTube. youtu.be/j3LRhwEYIsA That film gives you a bit of the poem as well.
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