Honour
I COULD NOT LOVE YOU
DEAR SO WELL
LOVED I NOT HONOR MORE
SERJEANT HAROLD FULLER PARSONS
"I was with Parsons in a trench near Zonnebeke ... I had just moved away from him for a moment when some shrapnel burst over us, and I saw Parsons hit in the throat and killed immediately ... We lifted Parsons from the trench on to the parapet and covered him up with his groundsheet. He was buried at dusk just behind our trench. I don't know if a cross is put up to him." This eye-witness account was given to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau on 15 March 1918 by Private G Todd, in response to enquiries instigated by Sergeant Parson's wife.
It was Mrs Parsons who chose the inscription, the last two lines of 'To Lucasta, Going to the Wars' by Richard Lovelace 1618-1658.
Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of that chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this incontancy is such
As thou too shalt adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.
HE LOVED HONOUR
MORE THAN HE LOVED LIFE
LANCE CORPORAL THOMAS EUSTACE
Thomas Eustace, born in Newfoundland in 1888, was a graduate of Bishop's University, Quebec, where he was studying for the ministry of the Church of England when he enlisted. According to the war diary, his squadron had just gone into the trenches at Hill 63 when he became the regiment's first casualty. The diary doesn't record how he died but mentions that German snipers had been very active. He was buried the next afternoon, "Simple burial service carried out. Corporal Hodge of the 4th CMR officiated." Corporal Hodge, a serving clergyman, was injured by a shell the following day and died of his wounds the day after that.
Thomas Eustace's inscription is not a direct quote but has echoes of Brutus's speech to Cassius when he declared, "For let the gods so speed me as I love the name of honour more than I fear death," [Julius Caeser, Act 1 Sc. 2] and also of the seventeenth-century poet, Richard Lovelace, whose 'To Lucasta, going to the Wars' ends: "I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I nor honour more".