Claude Templer was born in Dharmsala, Punjab, India on July 5th, 1895, the son of Colonel Henry Templer late of the 5th Punjab Cavalry. He was educated at Wellington College, the Anglo-Saxon School in Paris and the Royal Military College Sandhurst. He was a cadet at Sandhurst when the war broke out and was commissioned in November 1914 and joined the 1st Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment on the Western Front. Captured during a raid on German trenches at La Bassee on 22nd December 1914, he spent two and a half years in captivity in Germany. During this period he escaped and was recaptured twelve times – from the prison camps at Hanover Munden, Torgau, Burg (twice), Magdeburg, Augustabad, from the Burg Civil Goal (4 times), the Fortress of Wesel, and whilst travelling under escort between Wesel and Magdeburg. He and two friends, Captain Harrison and Lieutenant Insall, finally managed to escape from captivity in Strohen POW camp in August 1917, reaching the Dutch border in late August. He was interned in a quarantine camp at Eschede for two weeks, before being permitted to return to England. During his stay in England he had a private interview with the King.
Untiring in his efforts to rejoin his regiment at the Front, Templer was passed fit for active service and landed in France on 29 March 1918 and was promoted to Captain in ‘D’ Company. He was killed after a successful raid on the German trenches near Auchy-les-Mines on the night of 4 June 1918 when a chance shell struck him during his return to the British trenches.
During his captivity Templer wrote a number of poems, essays and short stories. About one third of these were recovered from Germany and assembled into a book Poems and Imaginings: Written in Captivity in Germany published in 1919.
Claude Templer’s Poems:
Resources for Claude Templer:
Poems and Imaginings: Written in Captivity in Germany https://archive.org/details/poemsimaginings00tempiala/page/n7
Detailed descriptions of some of Templer’s escape attempts can be found in Chapter Five of Voices in Flight: Escaping Soldiers and Airmen of World War I, by Martin W Bowman
Image of Claude Templer from the Templer Family Website