Last Words
HIS LAST WORDS
"BEST LOVE TO MOTHER"
PRIVATE JOSEPH FREDERICK HOUSTON
Joseph Houston died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station. It was the custom for the matron, or a senior nursing sister, to write to the next-of-kin and tell them of their relation's death. This would be how Mrs Annie Houston learnt of her son's dying words.
Annie Houston was a widow who ran a grocery shop in Dromman More, Armagh. In the 1911 census, Joseph was the only other occupant of the household. He gave his occupation as shop assistant - in the grocery shop perhaps?
Joseph volunteered in 1915; his medal index card showing that he was entitled to a 1915 Star having entered a theatre of war - France - on 4 October 1915. He served with the 9th Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers whose war diary has been transcribed for the dates 1 September 1917 to 9 June 1919. It shows that the battalion had not been in action during either May or June and any time they had spent in the trenches had been very quiet.
HIS LAST MESSAGE
"I WOULD NOT HAVE MISSED IT
FOR ANYTHING"
PRIVATE HENRY JAMES HEWETT
James Hewett had been a member of the Berkshire Yeomanry since he'd served with it in the Second South African War 1899-1902. In civilian life he was a sugar boiler in a confectionery factory but he remained a member of the Yeomanry, which became a Territorial force in 1908. At the outbreak of the First World War he opted for imperial service and was posted to Egypt with the 2nd Mounted Division in April 1915. Four months later the regiment was sent to Gallipoli where it served dismounted until the evacuation in January 1916. In March 1916 the regiment became part of the 6th Mounted Division, and in April 1918 it merged into the 17th Squadron Mounted Machine Gun Corps.
Hewett served with the Division in Egypt and Palestine until his death, taking part in all three battles of Gaza and in the capture of Lebanon in October 1918. For those who served in this part of the world, it was a totally different war from the Western Front - for the most part it was a war of movement, hot, dangerous, dusty and exhausting, but presumably for someone like Hewett exciting too. As he told his family, "I would not have missed it for anything".
The information on his medal card says that Hewett 'died', as opposed to 'died of wounds' or 'killed in action'. Like so many soldiers who served in that part of the world he could have died of dysentery or heat exhaustion or from the flu pandemic that was sweeping the world at the time.
Born in St John's Wood in 1891, Henry James Hewett was the son of Charles Hewett, who died in 1890, and his wife, Mathilda. Before his father's death the family lived at Uxmore Farm, Ipsden, which was then in Berkshire. Perhaps this is where Hewett acquired his skills in horsemanship.
HIS LAST WORDS WERE
AS HE FELL
"GO ON 'C' COMPANY
CAPTAIN WILLIAM MCCARTHY BRAITHWAITE MC
William Braithwaite was killed whilst charging a machine gun in an attack at Estrees on 3 October 1918. This was a preliminary action to the Battle of Montbrehain on the 5th; the Australians last engagement of the war on the Western Front.
Braithwaite served with the 22nd Battalion Australian Infantry and its Report of Operations gives a brief glimpse of the action on the 3rd October:
"There were several instances where determined resistance was offered by small groups of Machine Gunners, and an examination of the ground after the attack evidenced the fact that the bayonets had been used by our men to a greater extent than usual."
After school and university, Braithwaite joined his father's tannery, the largest employer in the town of Preston, Victoria. He enlisted in July 1916 and embarked for Europe that October, joining his battalion in France in January 1917. A collection of his private letters, now held in the Australian National War Memorial, shows that he took part in the the actions at Bapaume, Bullecourt, Ypres, Broodseinde, Villers-Bretonneaux and the August 1918 offensive. It was at Bullecourt that he was wounded in the arm and face during an action for which he was awarded the Military Cross:
"For conspicuous gallantry in leading his men into the enemy's trenches during the attack near Bullecourt on 3 May 1917. Although twice wounded he persevered with the work of consolidating the position and leading bombing parties against the enemy strongpoints."
Braithwaite was back in action by July and served throughout the Battle of Passchendaele. He was wounded again at Franvillers in June 1918, had two weeks leave in England in September and was killed soon after his return.
It was his father, also William Braithwaite, who chose his inscription. Although he and his wife had six daughters, William was their only son. William Braithwaite Senior died on 5 August 1922 whilst on a trip to Europe with his wife to visit their son's grave.
HIS LAST WORDS AT HOME WERE
"I SHALL BE ALRIGHT MOTHER"
PRIVATE PERCY COLE
You can imagine the scene at 33 Maple Road, Blackheath, Birmingham as Percy Cole prepared to leave for the front: Mrs Ellen Cole fussing and fretting whilst her son tried hard to reassure her, "I shall be alright mother". Did he mean I'll be able to look after myself, I've got everything I need, or don't worry I won't get killed; all three I expect.
Percy Cole was nineteen when he died. He would have been conscripted at 18 and allowed to go to the front at 19 so he wouldn't have been there for long before he was killed. He served with the 1st Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment and died of wounds 30 km from Beaumont-Hamel where at 3 am on 21 August the 1st Lincolnshires,
"formed up in their preliminary assembly positions in Wagon road (the road between Beamont Hamel and Serre), B and D formed the first wave, C and A the second wave. By zero, companies were formed up in their assembly positions, i.e., Serre road, due east of Wagon road.
At zero the battalion advanced and reached a ravine (probably the Puisieux road) without opposition: a few prisoners were taken en route. But now hostile machine-gun fire came from a line of German trenches ahead."
[History of the Lincolnshire Regiment 1914-1918]
The 1st Lincolnshire's objective had been to take a sunken road running north-west from Baillescourt Farm, north-east of Beaucourt. Lost to the Germans earlier in the year, Beaucourt was successfully retaken, thus the Lincolnshires played their part the Second Battle of Albert, which restarted the stalled Allied advance and really was the beginning of the end. However, by the end of the month the Lincolnshires had suffered three officers and twenty-nine other ranks killed, one officer and two other ranks died of wounds, together with twenty missing and a total of 171 wounded.
Percy Cole was one of the two other ranks who died of wounds; his final words to his mother tragically belied.
HIS LAST WORDS
"I PRAY TO GOD
TO KEEP MUM AND DAD
HAPPY AND WELL" RIP
PRIVATE FREDERICK CHARLES RIVERS
At 1 pm on 9th August 1918, the 6th Battalion the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment received orders that they were to attack at 5.30 pm that evening. The battalion war diary recorded:
"Attack completely successful after hand fighting. 12 machine guns captured 10 others destroyed, 4 Trench Howitzers & 1 granatenwerfer [grenade thrower] & about 40 prisoners taken. Attack penetrated about 2000 yards into enemy positions."
Two days later the war diary counted up the casualties the regiment had incurred between 12 noon on the 9th and 12 noon on the 11th August. They amounted to 165 including two officers and 24 other ranks killed. Fourteen members of the regiment are buried with Rivers in Ville-sur-Ancre Communal Cemetery Extension; Rivers is the only one to have died on the 11th. I don't like to think about it but, there was no Regimental Aid Post or Field Ambulance attached to this cemetery so Rivers would not have received any particular medical attention. However, he obviously knew he was dying and lived long enough to be able utter his last affecting words. I wonder who passed them on.
Frederick Rivers was the seventh of his parents' ten children. Father, Charles William Rivers, had served in the army between 1883 and 1894 - as a butcher in the Commissariat Transport Corps. In 1911 he was a labourer in the naval dockyards in Portsmouth. Two of Frederick's elder brothers served in the Royal Navy and one in the Royal Marine Artillery, all three survived the war.
HIS LAST WORDS
I'M GLAD I DONE MY BIT
PRIVATE WALTER SCOTT TELFORD
Walter Scott Telford died of wounds in a military hospital in Britain. Although the War Graves Commission's records have him serving with the 3rd Battalion Scots Guards, his medal rolls index card indicates that on 4 October 1915, when he qualified for the award of the 1914-15 Star by entering a theatre of war, he was in the 1st Battalion. The 3rd Battalion was in any case a home battalion and never went abroad during the war. None of this helps us discover when Telford was wounded but it is obvious that his wound was serious enough for him to be returned to a hospital in Britain - that he had that much yearned for 'Blighty' wound. Not that soldiers wanted it to be serious enough to kill them but just serious enough to keep them out of the war for a long time, preferably until it was over.
Telford was one of thirteen children, five of whom died before him, none of them in the war. His military service number indicates that he joined up between 3 September and 1 October 1914, making him if not actually one of the first one hundred thousand volunteers certainly an early volunteer, all of them prepared to 'do their bit' as the recruiting posters encouraged them to do.
Telford is commemorated on the war memorial in Livingston. Originally this was the memorial for employees of the Dean Oil Works in the town, indicating that Telford, like his father, was employed there in the shale mining industry.
His mother having died in 1910, it was his father who chose his inscription.
"I LEAVE MYSELF IN GOD'S HANDS"
EXTRACT FROM HIS DIARY
WRITTEN 19.9.17
LIEUTENANT JAMES LUNAN
The diary entry was written the day before James Lunan's death; he knew what was in store for him. The next day he was to lead his men in an attack on the German lines on the opening day of the Battle of Menin Road, part of Third Ypres. Attacking across a 14,500 yard front, the British achieved their objectives, showing what could be done in good weather and with a well-prepared attack.
But James Lunan was killed - as he obviously suspected he might be. We don't know how but three years later, on 10 August 1920, his body was discovered at map reference U.30.a.3.6. with no grave marker, which would indicate that he was killed in circumstances where it was not possible to retrieve and bury his body.
His faith in God was no temporary eve-of-battle phenomenon; Lunan, as the Aberdeen Press and Journal report of his death on Friday 28 September 1917 recorded, was an active member of the Boys Brigade connected with his church, Skene Street Congregational Church, where he was also secretary of the Sunday School. He came from a professional Aberdeen family where he had been educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and Robert Gordon College and worked at The North of Scotland and Town and County Bank Ltd. A member of the Territorial Force, he was called up on the outbreak of war. He served on the Western Front from February 1915 and achieved the rank of sergeant. Commissioned into the Gordon Highlanders in December 1915, he returned to Flanders in January 1917.
STICK IT THE WELSH
CAPTAIN MARK HAGGARD
'Stick it the Welsh' comes from the words Mark Haggard said to his men after he had been mortally wounded during the Battle of the Aisne attempting to take out a German machine gun post - "Stick it Welsh Regiment, stick it, Welsh!" Haggard had reconnoitred the position himself and then he led the attack, which after initial success failed. Knowing he was badly wounded, he told his men to leave him but one of them, Sergeant William Fuller, carried him back and was awarded a Victoria Cross for his action. Haggard died the next day.
His words however became famous, the story of their orgin repeated in newspaper accounts all over the world as the epitome of Welsh grit and endurance.
Haggard, a professional soldier, was the nephew of the novelist G. Rider Haggard. His wife chose his inscription.
LAST WORDS
"I AM SO SORRY, I AM TRYING
TO KEEP CHEERFUL AND HAPPY"
R.I.P.
LIEUTENANT EDGAR JOSEPH WILLIAM WHITEHEAD
Not everyone who died in the war and is buried in a War Graves Commission cemetery was killed in action or died of wounds, and nor did they have to have died during the war itself, in other words on or before 11 November 1918. In fact, 31 August 1921 was the latest official date of death for inclusion in the War Graves Commission's register of war dead.
Edgar Joseph William Whitehead had been attached to the Printing Company at GHQ, 1st Eschelon, when he died from pneumonia, quite possibly caused by influenza, in the base camp at Etaples on 17 February 1919. Between 1918 and 1920 it is estimated that more than 20 million people died from the influenza pandemic, traditionally known as Spanish Flu. Some authorities put the figure at well over this. There were four waves: spring 1918; summer 1918, which by October / November was extremely virulent; early 1919 and early 1920.
It was not a 'heroic' way to die in the way that being 'killed in action' or 'dying of wounds' were considered to be heroic, but it was not an easy way to die. Victims suffered high temperatures, headaches, joint pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, haemorrhaging and oedema in the lungs leaving them struggling for breath until they suffocated. Hence Edgar Whitehead's last words, "I am trying to keep cheerful and happy".
NEVER MIND ME BOYS
SAVE SERJEANT BEATON
TROOPER GEORGE RICHARD SOMERVILLE JOHNSTON
Serjeant Beaton survived and returned to Australia at the end of the war. Trooper Johnston died of his wounds and was buried at Embarkation Pier Cemetery, Gallipoli. After the evacuation his grave was lost so that now he has a Special Memorial, a normal headstone but with the addition of the words 'Believed to be buried in this cemetery'.
Johnstone's stoicism must have been reported to his parents for his father to have been able to quote them in his inscription. It's the same stoicism as Private Ernest Proven's "Go on, I'll manage", which Ernest's father chose for his inscription. Simple, powerful words, which do more than words like, honour, glory, duty, sacrifice to illustrate the qualities of the soldiers of a century ago.
LAST WORDS TO HIS COMRADE
"GO ON, I'LL MANAGE"
PRIVATE ERNEST ALBERT PROVEN
"Go on, I'll manage". Ernest's father says that these words were spoken to a comrade but they could easily have been heard by Ernest Proven's brother, Harry. Both Ernest and Harry served with the 1st Canadian Mounted Rifles Battalion and on the morning of 9 April 1917 they were both part of the first wave of the attack on Vimy Ridge. Ernest was hit in the shoulder by shrapnel. He survived long enough to be passed down the casualty evacuation chain to a base hospital in Boulogne, where he died three days later.
Sergeant Harry James Proven survived the attack at Vimy Ridge but was killed seventeen months later on 29 September 1918, six weeks before the end of the war, in the Canadian Corps' attack on Cambrai. Hit in the chest by German machine-gun fire, he died on the way to the main dressing station. His father also chose his headstone inscription. It reads:
Son of
James and Harriett Proven
Clanwilliam, Manitoba
Served 3 years & 8 months
Information on the Proven brothers comes from a blog post written by Michael O'Hagan whose great-grandfather was Ernest and Harry's brother.
The inscription came to my notice in Eric McGeer's excellent article on Canadian epitaphs of the Great War 'Time But the Impression Deeper Makes'.
TELL MOTHER I SENT HER
MY DEAREST LOVE
RIFLEMAN FRANK OSBORNE
As last messages go, this is pretty heartbreaking. Nineteen-year-old Frank Osborne died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station at Lijssenthoek on 3 April 1917. Casualty Clearing Stations were a half-way house between the battlefield and the base hospitals; it took the less seriously wounded who could spend up to four weeks there before being returned to their units, and it kept those who were too badly wounded to travel any further down the casualty evacuation chain.
There is no information as to the nature of Frank Osborne's wound but one imagines that he was one of those too seriously wounded to be moved ... but not too seriously wounded to be able to send his mother his "dearest love" before he died. It was his mother, Mrs Charlotte Osborne, chose his inscription.
HIS LAST WORDS TO FRIENDS
I WILL DO MY BEST
WHEN I GET THERE
GUNNER GEORGE FREDERICK PATTEN
Charles and Mary Patten had three sons. They all served in the war, only one returned. George, a railway fireman, was killed in Flanders on 28 August 1918. His brother Trooper Charles Douglas Patten, Australian Light Horse, died as a prisoner of war in Turkey on 9 February 1917.
Their sister, Mrs W.E.Webb, instituted a Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau search for Charles. This revealed that he had been captured at Katia on 9 August 1916 and initially interned in Afion Kara Hissar. When he died six months later he was in Angora Paludean Cachexia. One of the witnesses informed the Red Cross "he was in & out of hospital every week at Angora, suffering from malaria - he was game to the last".
In answer to another query Trooper G.A. Roberts wrote: "We are not allowed to attend the burial of a fellow prisoner. When they die in hospital they are taken to a room in the hospital and washed and then conveyed on a stretcher to the hospital grave ward and buried by Turks (shrouds are unnecessary luxuries according to these people) there is no mark to show who is buried in certain places. We know they are English that is all."
After the war the bodies of all allied prisoners of war buried in Anatolia were exhumed and reinterred in Baghdad North Gate Cemetery. The graves are unidentified but the names of the dead are recorded at the cemetery. However, access to the cemetery is difficult at the present time and in acknowledgement of this the War Graves Commission have compiled a two-volume Roll of Honour of the casualties either buried or simply commemorated in Iraq, which can be inspected in the Commission's head office in Maidenhead.
MY COUNTRY BEFORE EVEN YOU
MOTHER DEAR
(HIS PARTING WORDS
ON LEAVING HOME)
LIEUTENANT JOHN CLARENCE HANSON
John Clarence Hanson was a school teacher born in 1893 in St John, New Brunswick, Canada. He enlisted in the Canadian Infantry on 20 March 1916. He later transfered to the Royal Flying Corps, serving with the 55th Squadron, a daytime bombing squadron. He was "accidentally killed" on 14 July 1917.
It appears to me that he was an only child, which gives his inscription an added poignancy - how vividly his father has managed to convey the tensions of his last good-bye.
LAST WORDS
"LOVE TO ALL AT HOME"
PRIVATE W PHILPOTT
Private Philpott died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station at Bailleul on the last day of 1914 with someone at his bedside who was able to record his last words and communicate them to his mother, who chose them for his headstone inscription.
It is possible that it was his mother who was at his bedside as it was not unheard of for the next-of-kin to be sent for. However, I have a feeling that this was only done when the patient was in one of the base hospitals and Bailleul was a Casualty Clearing Station, not far from the front line. Nevertheless, such was the care taken to communicate with the next-of-kin that it's quite possible that Mrs Philpott was informed of his words in a letter written by one of the nurses or by an army padre.
HIS LAST WORDS
"GOODBYE COBBER
GOD BLESS YOU"
TROOPER HAROLD RUSH
This is probably the most famous of all Australian inscriptions. They weren't Trooper Rush's dying words but they were spoken as he turned to a friend just before they charged the Turkish lines when he knew that death was virtually certain.
At dawn on 7 August 1915 the Australian Light Horse, dismounted and serving as infantry, were given instructions to charge The Nek, a promontory in Turkish hands. The plan was that there would be four waves, each of 150 men, who would 'hop the sacks', leave the trenches, at two-minute intervals. Waves one and two had been mown down almost to a man, Rush was in the third wave. The attack was called off before the fouth wave but not before well over 300 Australians, including Rush, had been killed or mortally wounded in less than eight minutes.
Harold Rush was an Englishman who had emigrated to Australia five years earlier when he was 18. Somehow his words must have been communicated to his parents back home in Bury St Edmunds, England, as it was his father who confirmed his inscription.
HIS LAST WORDS WERE
"I AM NOT AFRAID
I HAVE DONE MY DUTY"
SERJEANT FREDERICK PARMENAS BECKLEY
Many men believed it was their duty to serve their country, and the fact that they had done so brought comfort to their relations - and to the men themselves. Serjeant Elwell was the Scoutmaster of the 1st Chesham Bois Troop which he is thought to have founded.
HIS LAST MESSAGE
"I AM ALL RIGHT
KEEP CHEERY AND BRIGHT"
SECOND LIEUTENANT WILLIAM HAY
Lieutenant Hay was wounded on 27 March when the First Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers were heavily involved in an action around the St Eloi craters. He was well enough to send his parents this encouraging message but four days later he was dead.
WE WILL GO FORWARD
AT WHATEVER COST,
QUIETLY, UNTIRINGLY
UNALARMED
CAPTAIN CHARLES HUNTER BROWNING
Captain Browning, a professional soldier, was educated at Eton where he had been not only a King's Scholar and Captain of School but also a fine cricketer whom Wisden described as "a stubborn batsman and an excellent wicketkeeper with a quiet style".
His inscription displays the same quiet style and sounds as though it comes from something that Browning wrote or said himself - a letter, a diary entry or perhaps, and most likely, his instructions to his men on 26 August as the British II Corps were ordered to take a stand at Le Cateau in order to delay the oncoming German 1st Army.
The British were heavily outnumbered and exhausted after their defeat at Mons on the 23rd, since when they had been retreating with scarcely any rest. Browning, was a professional soldier. He joined the army in 1898 and served throughout the South African War. His words sound as though they come from someone who knows the odds: "We will go forward at whatever cost, quietly, untiringly, unalarmed".
Browning was killed when his battery came under direct fire from German artillery. Although British casualties were very heavy, and they were forced to withdraw by mid-afternoon, the delay at Le Cateau is considered to have made a significant difference to the ultimate outcome of the war.