Christian Names
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"OUR WALLY"
O MOST COMPASSIONATE
LORD JESUS
GRANT HIM ETERNAL REST
CAPTAIN WALLENSTEIN RYAN-LEWIS, MC
"Our Wally" had the most splendid Christian name: Wallenstein, it was his mother's maiden name.
Wallenstein Ryan-Lewis was a qualified Mining Engineer and a member of the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. From various mentions in the The Mining Magazine you can see that in 1912 he was working for the Amo Tin Mines in Northern Nigeria, and that in early 1914 he was "returning to Russia".
He served with the 284th Army Troops Company, a pool of Royal Engineers held at Army level as, if I have understood their role correctly, technical consultants for some of the big military engineering and construction projects: heavy bridges, railway systems, water supplies etc. Ryan-Lewis was a valuable man.
He died of wounds on 25 March 1918. I haven't found any information about his death but the citation for the award of his Military Cross is both significant and suggestive.
The enemy having captured a village, he counter-attacked, under heavy shell fire, established his company in front of it, and dug in. He held the position with great courage and coolness, for seven hours, and till nearly surrounded, and then successfully withdrew. Whilst holding the position he was wounded.
London Gazette 29 July 1918
First of all, what was a Royal Engineer doing counter-attacking with his company and holding out for seven hours before withdrawing? This is not the normal role of a Sapper in wartime. And, was the wounding referred to the cause of his death? The date of his death, 25 March 1918, makes me wonder if he was wounded on that day, the day the German Spring Offensive reached Noyon. The rate of their advance eventually leading General Haig to issue his famous 'backs to the wall' order on 11 April:
There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the Freedom of mankind alike depend upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.
In the face of the German attack was it a question of all hands to the deck, is that why Captain Ryan-Lewis RE found himself fighting in the role of an infantry officer? The location of his burial would certainly support this. He was originally buried in Noyon Old British Cemetery, a cemetery made by the 46th Casualty Clearing Station and the 44th Field Ambulance, close to the railway station in the town. Noyon fell to the Germans and the identity of the men's graves was lost in the subsequent fighting. After the war the bodies were exhumed and reinterred in Noyon New British Cemetery with the words 'Buried near this spot' on their headstones.
Ryan-Lewis's sister, Evelyn, chose his inscription. The first part quotes his diminutive in inverted commas, the second part a classic Roman Catholic formula, which would suggest that the family were Roman Catholics.
"SONNY"
EVER LOVING MEMORY
FLOREAT ETONA
SECOND LIEUTENANT PATRICK ARTHUR DUDLEY JACKSON
Patrick Jackson, "Sonny", was the only son of Lt Colonel and Mrs Cecil Jackson. According to the brass plaque fixed to his original wooden grave marker, which hangs in St Michael's Church, Thornton, Buckinghamshire, Jackson was commissioned into the army straight from school in 1914, and first went to the Western Front in 1915. School was Eton, as the final line of his inscription makes clear: Floreat Etona, may Eton flourish. This was a familiar greeting or valediction among Etonians as the obituary of another Etonian, John Byron Noel, makes clear: "'Floreat Etona' were the last words he wrote to one of his greatest friends the day he started for France."
YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN
JACK DEAR
FOR TRUE LOVE NEVER DIES
PRIVATE JOHN ROBERT WILSON
John Robert Wilson was born and grew up in the mining community of Broken Hill, South Australia where he was a miner. He served with the Australian Light Horse and embarked from Australia for Gallipoli on 20 April 1915. He was killed at Lone Pine just over two months later.
His inscription was chosen by his mother Mrs C Wilson.
DICKON
3RD SON OF RICHARD ROSS
RUTHERFORD, ROXBURGH, SCOTLAND
SECOND LIEUTENANT RICHARD (DICKON) ROSS
Dickon Ross was the third of Richard and Emily Ross's five sons. James, the eldest, a Scottish rugby international who played for the London Scottish and the Barbarians, was killed on 1 November 1914. Dickon was killed on 25 September 1916 and Thomas, fatally wounded on 4 November 1918, died on the 13th, two days after the Armistice.
Their father, Richard Ross, farmed over 1,000 acres around Maxton in Roxburghshire. However, father had died in 1908 and Emily Ross moved from Rutherford Farmhouse, Maxton to Sherborne in Dorset. Nevertheless, she thought of Maxton as her sons' home and although James had no grave and is commemorated on the Menin Gate, both Dickon and his brother Thomas's inscriptions reference Rutherford, the place where they were born.
IN MEMORY OF DEAR BOB
SON OF MR. AND MRS. W.H. GOODWIN
COOMA, N.S.W.
SERJEANT ROBERT BOYD GOODWIN
Bob Goodwin was a draper from Cooma, the main town in the Monaro region of New South Wales. He was killed in action on 11 March 1917 and originally buried at map reference 57c.R.3.c.5.8 before being reinterred in Lesboeufs in July 1919.
THANK YOU HARRY
RIFLEMAN HENRY ASHFIELD CARLISLE
'Thank you Harry', a simple message of gratitude from Harry's nineteen year old sister, Maud Sibyl Carlisle - his next-of-kin. Harry had been her only close family member; their parents were both dead and there were no other surviving siblings. They had lived with their mother's brother, the Revd Gilbert King, vicar of Easterton, Wiltshire, whose only child Noel Gilbert Bryan King was killed in 1917.
Harry was educated at Denstone College and then went to Ceylon. He enlisted in the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps on the outbreak of war. According to Charles Bean's 'The Story of the Anzac', the Corps landed in Gallipoli with 150 men and one officer and were used by General Birdwood as a personal escort and camp guard. This was necessary because, as Birdwood himself recounted, "when we first landed at ANZAC, with the whole countryside covered with thick, high bushes in which many Turkish snipers were concealed, my little escort proved itself invaluable at scouting through the scrub." Harry Carlisle was killed soon after the Gallipoli landings; it was said that he was shot going to the help of a wounded comrade.
GOOD-BYE FRED, YOU HAVE
NOBLY DONE YOUR DUTY
THOUGH YOUR MOTHER'S HEART WAS BROKEN
PRIVATE FRED LAND
There's no sign of Fred's mother on the War Grave Commission's records. It was Fred's stepfather, Henry Morgan, who chose his inscription. I have a feeling that Henry Morgan meant it when he said "your mother's heart was broken"; I think his mother must have been dead.
OH BERTIE DARLING
HOW WE MISS YOU
PRIVATE DONALD ROBERT ROSS THOMSON
Nineteen-year-old Donald Robert Ross Thomson, 'Bertie', was the seventh of ten children of Donald and Margaret Thomson, of Govanhill, Glasgow. There were twenty years between the children. Bertie died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station at Bethune. It was his mother who confirmed his inscription on the War Grave Commission's form - a touching lament for her lost child.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
MY DEAR BROTHER FRED
FROM ALF
PRIVATE FREDERICK ROBERT WILLIAM OSBORNE
A beautifully solemn and unsophisticated inscription from Alf to his brother Fred. The brothers' parents were both still alive and named as next-of-kin but they don't feature in the inscription, which was signed for by Alf.
DEAR STEPHEN
CAPTAIN STEPHEN USSHER
A gentle inscription that uncovers a family tragedy. Captain Stephen Ussher was one of the five sons of the Revd Richard and Mrs Ussher. His youngest brother, Arthur Basil, died when he was seven. After Stephen's death, his older brother, Beverly, was killed in Gallipoli in June 1915. Then after the war his oldest brother, Robert Arland, died following an operation and the next year, 1922, his younger brother, Richard, died from a war-related illness.
OH ARTY, DEAR DEPARTED SHADE
WHERE IS THY PLACE
OF BLISSFUL REST
FROM HIS LOVING MOTHER
PRIVATE ARTHUR BULLOCK
Mrs Bullock has modified a poem by Robert Burns, 'To Mary in Heaven', substituting her pet name for her son for that of Mary. In the poem, it is the anniversary of Mary's death and Burns is remembering his last meeting with her, little realising at the time that it would be his last.
Thou ling'ring star, with lessening ray,
That lov'st to greet the early morn,
Again thou usher'st in the day
My Mary from my soul was torn.
O Mary! dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of blissful rest?
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?
Arthur Bullock died at the base hospital at Etaples from the effects of gas. Although Mrs Bullock has quoted from verse one, I have a feeling that the final verse would have echoed her own sentiments too:
Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes,
And fondly broods with miser-care;
Time but th' impression stronger makes,
As streams their channels deeper wear.