Book Of Common Prayer
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SUBMISSION
I WAS DUMB
AND OPENED NOT MY MOUTH
FOR IT WAS THY DOING
SECOND LIEUTENANT LESLIE GORDON PEASTON
There are many ways of expressing submission to the will of God 'Thy will be done', 'Not my will but thine O Lord', but this one seems particularly stark. The words come from Psalm 39 verse 10 and are closer to the version in the Book of Common Prayer than in the King James Bible: "I became dumb, and opened not my mouth: for it was Thy doing".
Leslie Peaston was the youngest of the four sons of George and Caroline Peaston of 66 Narbonne Avenue, Clapham Common. Caroline Peaston, by now a widow, chose the inscription. Whatever she might have felt like saying, however she might have felt like complaining, Mrs Peaston felt she couldn't because she knew that it was the will of God that her son Leslie had to die and that therefore she must submit herself to it.
Peaston served originally in the Royal Fusiliers, rising to the rank of corporal. He transferred to the Middlesex Regiment and was then commissioned into the Fusiliers in June 1917. He served with the 1st Battalion and was one of two officers killed in action at Vendelles on 21 March when the Germans subjected their lines to a heavy bombardment of HE and gas shells.
As with many of the casualties on this first day of the German offensive, Peaston's body was not initially buried. In September 1919, it was exhumed from map reference 62c R2 B5-6 and identified by the fact that his shirt had his name on it.
NOW LETTEST THOU THY SERVANT
DEPART IN PEACE
RIFLEMAN FREDERICK THOMAS MOON
Frederick Moon died as a prisoner of war in Germany. There is very little else I can tell you about him other than that he had been a professional soldier who in September 1914 was still on the reserve. In 1911 Moon was in Malta serving with the 2nd Battalion The Prince Albert's Somerset Light Infantry. Later in 1911 the Battalion went to China and then in 1914 to India where it remained until 1917. However, Moon earned the 1914 Star by entering a theatre of war on 21 September 1914. This is why I conclude he must have been still on the reserve when war broke out.
Moon is now buried in Cologne Southern Cemetery but he could have died in any one of the 180 different prison camps in the Hanover, Hessen, Rhine or Westphalia regions. After the war it was decided to gather all the British dead from these areas into the Southern Cologne Cemetery, which was to be one of four cemeteries in Germany into which the exhumed bodies of prisoners of war were reburied. There is no record of when Moon was taken prisoner and no record of his cause of death.
Born in Williton, Somerset to Edward and Emma Moon it was a Mrs E Cheshire of 11 Havelock Road, Wealdstone, Middlesex who chose his inscription. In the absence of any other information I would suggest that this was his mother, remarried, or a married sister. She chose an extract from the Nunc Dimittis, an ancient canticle that has been part of the Church of England's service of Evening Prayer for centuries, as well as part of the funeral service:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
WE ARE IN DEATH
LANCE SERJEANT JOSEPH BELL
The words of the Order for the Burial of the Dead from the Book of Common Prayer have brought comfort to mourners for centuries. This inscription comes from the prayer said by the priest at the graveside as the body is lowered into the ground.
Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased? Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the pains of eternal death. Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee.
The words express truths that were never more evident than on 1 July 1916 - that our lives are short, that we can be cut down like a flower at any time, and that whilst we live death surrounds us on all sides.
Joseph Bell was among almost 20,000 men killed along the Somme front on that one day. It's a distance of between fifteen and twenty miles depending on how many twists and turns of the front line you take into account. So that's a thousand bodies a mile, almost one every two yards. How on earth were they all buried?
Many bodies of course weren't buried, they just disappeared, pulverized by shells, trodden into the ground, lost for ever. Others were carried to prepared grave trenches just behind the lines. This is what happened to Joseph Bell. And, whilst the army made every attempt to bury soldiers with dignity, funeral services must have been pretty hurried and abbreviated in the days immediately following 1 July.
Joseph Bell's mother, Sarah, chose his inscription. Not only is it a form of momento mori - take care how you live as death is all around you - but, by referencing the words from this funeral prayer, Mrs Bell evokes its whole sentiment for her son: "O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the pains of eternal death ... and suffer us not, at our last hour ... to fall from thee".
MAKE HIM TO BE NUMBERED
WITH THY SAINTS O LORD
IN GLORY EVERLASTING
BRIGADIER GENERAL STUART CAMPBELL TAYLOR
Stuart Campbell Taylor, a career soldier, was one of seventy-eight generals to die as a result of enemy action in the First World War. Commissioned into the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in 1892, he served in Tirah on the North West Frontier, Mauritius, South Africa, Crete and Northern Nigeria before retiring from the Army in 1911 at the age of 39. He rejoined the regiment on the outbreak of war taking command of the 11th Battalion. In May 1915 he was promoted to command the 15th West Yorkshire Regiment, the Leeds Pals, where his men described him as "a martinet but very fair".
Wounded in May 1916 he was therefore not with his men when they attacked towards the village of Serre at 7.30 on the morning of 1 July 1916, losing 15 officers and 233 men killed in the opening minutes of the campaign. In May 1917, whilst still in command of the regiment, he was awarded the DSO for conspicuous gallantry and then in March 1918 he was promoted Brigadier-General in command of 93rd Brigade, 31st Division. On the morning of 1 October he was on a tour of inspection of his brigades when he was fatally injured by a bursting shell. He died ten days later.
Stuart Campbell Taylor was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and at Bedford Grammar School. A staunch old boy of the Dragon, there is an extensive obituary to him in their memorial volume, 'Dragon School, Old Boys and Masters Who Gave Their Lives in the Great War'. The book has two illustrations painted by his younger brother the artist Leonard Campbell Taylor, who was also an old boy of the school.
Brigadier-General Taylor's inscription was chosen by his widowed mother and comes from the Te Deum:
We therefore pray thee, help Thy servants: whom thou hast redeemed with Thy precious blood
Make them to be numbered with Thy saints: in glory everlasting.