Memorial Verse
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WE CANNOT LORD
THY PURPOSE SEE
BUT ALL IS WELL
THAT'S DONE BY THEE
PRIVATE JOSEPH EDWARD PUGH
Private Joseph Pugh served with the 7th Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, part of the 21st Infantry Brigade, 30th Division. He died on 25 October 1918 and was buried in a Casualty Clearing Station Cemetery at Hazebrouck. It is difficult to think where he might have been wounded or killed. At the time of his death his battalion were 50 km further east near Zaandvoorde. The Casualty Clearing Stations only returned to Hazebrouck in October and even on 1 October the battalion were 30 km away in Comines. Nevertheless, Pugh, who served originally with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, died on 25 October 1918 and is buried in Hazebrouck.
Pugh was not an Irishman. He came from Tregynon a small community near Newtown in Wales where his father was a farmer. It was his wife, Sarah, who chose his inscription. Her address was Tan y Bryn, Sarn, Newtown, another small farming community not far from Tregynon.
It is a traditional inscription, one that chimes with all those relations who chose 'Thy will be done', or 'Not my will but Thine be done O Lord' or 'God knows best', an attitude of acceptance that we today find difficult to comprehend, especially perhaps for someone who was killed within two weeks of the end of the war.
OH WHY WAS HE TAKEN
SO YOUNG AND SO FAIR
WHEN EARTH HELD SO MAY
IT COULD BETTER SPARE
PRIVATE ROBERT CURRIE
Robert Currie was killed in air raid on Etaples. I don't know whether he was a patient in one of the hospitals or whether he was in one of the camps. The Times, reporting the event on the 24 May, made much of the fact that Etaples was a hospital area, but it was also a huge training camp.
"Sunday's raids lasted from soon after 10 at night till after midnight. There was a short interval at half-past 11, and evidently two separate parties were employed, numbering between them over a score of machines, from which a great number of bombs were dropped, many of the very largest size, making craters in the ground 15 and 20 feet across ... Some of the enemy machines came down and used their machine-guns, raking the hospital tents and attendants quarters with fire from low altitudes. No circumstance of savagery seems to have been omitted."
The Etaples Base Commandant's war diary recorded:
"15/9/1918 Area attacked by enemy aircraft. Casualties 1 Officer, 1 Nursing Sister, 167 OR killed; 27 Officers, 11 Nursing Sisters, 584 OR wounded; 18 OR missing."
Currie's inscription comes from a popular piece of 'In Memoriam' verse in which the pronoun is interchangeable:
Oh why was he/she taken so young and so fair
When earth held so many it better could spare;
Hard was the blow that compelled us to part
With out loving son/daughter, so dear to our heart.
WE OFTEN CALL HIS NAME
THERE'S NOTHING LEFT
TO ANSWER BUT
HIS PHOTO ON THE WALL
PRIVATE THOMAS SLACK MM
Thomas Slack's inscription comes from a piece of memorial verse that often appeared in the 'In Memoriam' columns of newspapers. This is one of the longer versions:
There's a lonely grave in France
Where a brave young hero sleeps;
There's a cottage home in England
Where his dear ones sit and weep.
We think of him in silence,
Whose name we often call,
Though there's nothing left to answer
But his photo on the wall.
Slack was one of William and Eliza Slack's fifteen children, of whom ten had survived. William Slack was a coal miner in Tibshelf, Nottingham, as were his sons who went to work in the mines when they left school at 14.
Thomas volunteered when the 11th Battalion Sherwood Foresters was raised in Derby in September 1914. He went with it to France on 27 August 1915, thus qualifying for the 1915 Star. The battalion took part in the Battle of Loos, 25 September 1915; in July and October 1916 it was engaged on the Somme and in 1917 in the Third Battle of Ypres. It was during this battle that Slack was awarded a Military Medal: "For gallantry and devotion to duty when in the attack near Zillebeke, near Ypres, on 20th September 1917".
In November 1917, the battalion was posted to Italy where it served on the Asiago Plateau. This had been a fairly quiet sector until the 14/15th June 1918 when the Austrians attacked in great force along the line. Slack was killed on the 29th.
COULD I HIS MOTHER
HAVE CLASPED HIS HAND
THE SON I LOVED SO WELL
PRIVATE THOMAS POTTER
On 28 March 1918 the 8th/10th Battalion Gordon Highlanders were in the support trenches near Tilloy when at 3 am:
"The enemy opened a terrific bombardment consisting of a large amount of gas & HE shells which lasted till 7 am. Soon afterwards an attack was launched under a terrific barrage. The 7th Cameron Highlanders who were there holding the front line were badly knocked about and we sent two companies to assist them and who did fine work there greatly checking the German advance. Fighting continued intermittently all day and at about 12.30 pm orders were received to withdraw to the Army Line as the enemy had turned the flanks of the Divisions on our Right and Left. This was carried out in good order, the men fighting a heroic rearguard action the whole way. As casualties were heavy the Battalion was relieved by the 8th Bn Seaforth Highlanders and withdrew to trenches behind Telegraph Hill."
War Diary 8th/10th Battalion Gordon Highlanders
Thomas Potter was wounded on 28 March 1918 and died as a German prisoner on 11 April 1918. It was April 1919 before his widowed mother received definite news of his fate. Buried originally in Dechy Communal German Extension, his body was exhumed and reburied in Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery in 1923.
Mary Potter chose her son's inscription from a popular memorial verse:
Could I, his mother, have clasped his hand
The son I loved so well
Or kissed his brow when death was near,
And whispered, My son, Farewell,
I seem to see his dear, sweet face
Through a mist of anxious tears
But a mother's part is a broken heart
And a burden of lonely years.
HIS NAME IS WRITTEN
IN LETTERS OF LOVE
IN HEARTS HE LEFT BEHIND
PRIVATE RONALD WILLIAM RESCHKE
This is a very popular inscription from an equally popular piece of memorial verse regularly printed in the 'In Memoriam' columns of newspapers:
We think we can see his smiling face
As he bade his last good-bye,
When he left his home forever
In a foreign land to die.
He sleeps beside his comrades
In a grave across the foam,
But his name is written in letters of love
On the hearts he left at home.
Ronald William Reschke was a labourer in Kyogle, New South Wales when he enlisted on 31 October 1916. He served with the 31st Battalion Australian Infantry and was killed on the 10 April 1918.
On the night of the 9/10 April, the 31st Battalion relieved the 58th in the Corbie sector of the front line. The war diary reports that the enemy was very quiet during the relief but that their artillery became very active during the day:
"At 1.30 pm enemy shelled farm occupied by us in J.34 central with 40 rds of 5.9" and 4.2". Three direct hits on the farm caused 27 casualties ... "
Reschke was one of the 27 as these were the only casualties to be reported that day.
WHO PLUCKED THIS FLOWER?
THE MASTER
AND THE GARDENER
HELD HIS PEACE
PRIVATE NATHAN WHITEHEAD
This is an old epitaph, several versions of which appeared in a number of Victorian epitaph collections in the 1870s. The addition of some extra punctuation and a couple of words helps make the sense clearer:
"Who plucked this flower?"
"I" said the master
And the gardener
Held his peace
Later people felt the need to expand the story:
Once a gardener had a choice flower that he tended and valued above all the flowers of the garden. One morning it was missing. He thought a servant had taken it, and went about asking them all if they had plucked it.
Then a servant said: "I saw the master walking in the garden early, and he plucked it."
The gardener said: "It is well. The flower was his. For him I nursed and tended it, and as he has taken it, it is well."
As with the flower, so with a young life; God has taken it, it was his to take.
Nathan Whitehead was one of the three children of Jonathan and Mary Whitehead of Tebay in Westmorland. Father was a platelayer with a railway company and in 1911, sixteen-year-old Nathan was a shop assistant. He served with the 5th Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, not joining them until after they had been evacuated from Gallipoli in December 1915. They spent the rest of the war in Egypt and Palestine where Whitehead died of dysentery - as did so many soldiers in this part of the world - on 17 January 1918.
ENLISTED AUG. 23RD 1914
"HE SLEEPS
WITH ENGLAND'S HEROES
IN THE WATCHFUL CARE OF GOD"
SECOND LIEUTENANT ERNEST CARTWRIGHT
When some families noted the date of enlistment in the personal inscription it was to show that the man had been a volunteer. There was pride, a cachet, in the fact that he hadn't waited to be conscripted but had volunteered. In the case of Ernest Cartwright, his wife will also have wanted to highlight the tragedy of her husband's death just ten days before the end of the war.
Cartwright had joined the West Riding Regiment as a private, going with them to France on 15 July 1915. He was commissioned in May 1918, serving, so the War Graves Commission's records show, with the 5th Battalion. But on 1 November, the day Cartwright was killed in action, the 5th Battalion's war diary makes no mention of any action. It wasn't even in the front line.
1 November: "Fine day. Battalion trained on ground west of Solesmes in morning. Recreation in afternoon. News was received that Austria-Hungary had concluded an Armistice with the Allies."
Cartwright's name isn't listed among the month's officer casualties either. He was, however, dead, the news reported in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph on 18 November.
The second part of Cartwright's inscription became very popular on headstones, war memorials and In Memoriam columns. You can see its popularity grow in the pages of local newspapers: it appeared once in 1916 and once 1917, eight times in 1918 and fifty times in 1919. The earliest mentions sometimes quote the full two-verse poem. The later mentions restrict themselves to the last two lines.
Gone without one farewell message.
Mangled by a German shell,
He, whose laughter still is ringing
In the home he loved so well.
Comrade's hands, by love made tender,
Laid our warrior 'neath the sod,
And he sleeps with England's heroes
In the watchful care of God.
WHAT HAPPY HOURS
WE ONCE ENJOYED
HOW SWEET THE MEMORY STILL
PRIVATE IRWIN PERCY LEHMAN
Private Lehman's inscription comes from a popular piece of memorial verse, which can still be found in newspaper In Memoriam Columns in 2017:
What happy hours
We once enjoyed
How sweet the memory still
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill
I don't know who composed the lines but they made their first newspaper appearance in January 1896. Interestingly, unlike much verse of this type, the words make absolutely no attempt to console or ameliorate the family's grief by referring to eternal life or meeting again. Lehman's inscription may not actually get as far as mentioning the aching void but the implication is there.
Irwin Percy Lehman was twenty-four when he was conscripted under the Canadian Military Service Act on 14 January 1918. On 16 April he embarked from Halifax, arriving in Liverpool on the 28th. The new arrivals were kept segregated for two weeks in case they were carrying contagious diseases. The day after they were released Lehman went down with mumps and was hospitalised for the next twenty days.
On 14 September he arrived in France and on 2 October he joined the 21st Battalion in the trenches on the Hindenburg Line. On 11 October the battalion took part in the attack on the village of Avesnes-le-Sec where they met with severe resistance.
"Zero hour had been set for 0900 hours. From 0530 hours onward the enemy shelled the assembly area intermittently with HE and Gas but few casualties were sustained. The hostile shelling had no effect upon the jump off at 0900 hours. ... The enemy's retaliation was prompt, and his machine gun fire from the right caused many casualties in the first thirty minutes of the advance, but the attack continued unbroken until the advance of the whole line, right and left, was held up on the high ground south-west of Avesnes-le-Sec. The enemy's counter measure was an attack of Tanks, and the 21st Canadian Battalion after inflicting casualties, was forced to withdraw ... Fifty per cent of our Officers, NCOs and Lewis Gunners became casualties during the first half hour of the action."
21st Battalion Canadian Infantry War Diary 11 October 1918
Lehman was one of these casualties. He's buried in Niagara Cemetery, Iwoy, a battlefield cemetery where 156 of the 199 burials died on 11 October.
SLEEP LIGHTLY, LAD
THOU ART KING'S GUARD
AT DAYBREAK
LIEUTENANT WILLIAM GODFEY CHARLTON
This is an inscription of unknown origin about which there has been a certain amount of curiosity on the Internet. The words appear on several memorials in the North East of England and although it is not unknown elsewhere it is more commonly found here. And 'here' is where William Charlton came from. His father, John Charlton, was the head teacher at the Council School in Seaton Delaval, a village in Northumberland, eleven miles north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
In November 1917 an article appeared in the journal, The United Methodist, written by the Rev. Ernest FH Capey, a Methodist minister. He told of going for a walk one Sunday afternoon to the church in Ford, which overlooks Flodden Field. The church was locked but,
"On the inner door was suspended an artistic card 'in memoriam' of the brave boys of the village who had lost their lives in the war. It was headed:
Fought and died for Freedom
Sleep lightly, Lad,
Thou art for King's Guard at daybreak;
With spotless kit turn out,
And take a place of honour."
In other words, prepare yourself, for tomorrow, as a reward for dying for your country, you will part of the honour guard around God.
Searching the newspaper archive I came across an earlier mention of the inscription in an article in the Newcastle Journal of 9 October 1916. Reporting on the dedication of a memorial plaque in St Luke's Chapel, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, it mentioned an accompanying Roll of Honour, 'delicately executed, the gift of an anonymous friend'. The inscription on the Roll of Honour read: 'Pro Patria: Freely they served and died', followed by the same inscription as that on the door of Ford Church. The article finished with the information that, 'The roll is the work of Mr J.H. Binks of Ford, and is chastely and ably done'.
That certainly doesn't mean that Mr JH Binks composed the inscription, although he may well have done, but it does link the two locations. I don't imagine that it was the card in Ford Church that popularised the lines however, rather I should image it was its use by the Royal Infirmary, and the mention in the local paper. The North East War Memorial Project records several places where the inscription has been used on a war memorial. None of these places are more than 12 miles from Newcastle, except for Ford which is over 50 miles away.
John and Ann Charlton had four children, two sons and two daughters. William was the youngest. Before being commissioned into the Durham Light Infantry in January 1916, he was a pupil barrister at the Inns of Court in London. Serving with the 15th Battalion London Regiment, he went to France in July 1916 where he was severely wounded on the 7th. It was June 1918 before he returned to the front. He was killed two months later.
'Sleep lightly, Lad' is not the inscription on the Seaton Delaval war memorial. This carries the dedication 'To the Motherland', followed by the words on the next-of-kin memorial scroll. The memorial was unveiled on 2 September 1922 by Mr John Charlton "whose two sons were killed in the war"
And what is the personal inscription on the headstone of Captain George Fenwick Hedley Charlton, South Wales Borderers, killed in action on 6 October 1916?
Sleep lightly, Lad
Thou art King's Guard
At daybreak.
HE DIED FOR ENGLAND'S HONOUR
GUARDSMAN ARTHUR JAMES WILLIAMS
May the heavenly winds blow softly
O'er that far and silent grave,
Where sleeping without dreaming
Lies one we could not save.
He answered duty's call,
He lies among the slain,
He died for England's honour,
He has not died in vain.
Arthur Williams' father quoted from a piece of memorial verse of the kind to be found in the In Memoriam columns of local newspapers. Arthur's father, James, was a former Life Guards' trooper. The concept of England's honour would have resonated with him.
Williams' army number indicates that he joined up in February 1917. He served with the 1st Battalion the Welsh Guards. On 25 August 1918 the 1st Battalion were in the trenches at St Leger when they took part in an attack on the German-held town of Ecoust St Mein. Initially things went well, the heavy mist shrouding their attack. However, the supporting tanks got lost, the German wire was discovered to be uncut, and when the mist lifted the guardsmen were sitting ducks for the German machine guns. The war diary tells how they were forced to withdraw, emphasising that they took their wounded with them. However, Arthur Williams and four other Welsh Guardsmen, who all died on 25 August, were buried approximately ten kilometres behind the German lines in Dury German Cemetery. Their bodies were exhumed in 1924 and buried in Vis-en-Arois British Cemetery.
YOUR LAST FAINT WHISPER
WE THEN SHOULD HAVE HEARD
PRIVATE JOHN EDWARD HAWORTH
This is an inscription about the pain of not being present when the person you love dies. To begin with I couldn't imagine what one earth it meant but a search of the In Memoriam columns in early twentieth-century local newspapers provided the context:
Could we have been there at the hour of your death
To have caught the last sigh of your fleeting breath,
Your last faint whisper we then should have heard
And breathed in your ear just one loving word.
Only those who have lost are able to tell
The pain of the heart at not saying farewell.
Twenty-year-old John Haworth's wife, Sarah, chose his inscription; not only could she not be with him when he died but she may never have known how he died and she could neither attend his funeral nor visit his grave. 'The pain of the heart at not saying farewell' must have made 'closure' very difficult.
Haworth had been married in Padiham Parish Church during a leave in July 1917, three months before his death on 17 October. On the 31st, the following appeared in the Burnley Express:
Haworth: In loving memory of Pte. John Ed. Haworth, East Lancashire Regiment, killed Oct. 17th. aged 20 years.
He marched away so bravely
His young head proudly held
His footsteps never faltered
His courage never failed.
From his sorrowing wife and sister Betsy 6, Back Guy Fold, Padiham
John Haworth had been 17 and 6 months when 'he marched away so bravely' with the 1st/5th Battalion on 10 September 1914, not just young but too young to serve abroad. The battalion joined the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in Egypt, its initial task to guard the Suez Canal. In May 1915 it got drawn into the Gallipoli Campaign, was withdrawn in January 1916, returned to Egypt, and then in March 1917 was sent back to Europe. Frederick Gibbon, the author of the 42nd Division History, of which the 1st/5th were a part, noted that:
"The voyage westward across the Mediterranean was made under conditions widely different from those of the outward journey of September 1914, when "the glory of youth glowed in the soul," and the glamour of the East and the call of the unknown had made their appeal to adventurous spirits. Familiarity with war had destroyed illusion and had robbed it of most of its romance."
In September 1917 the battalion was at Nieuport, marking a waterlogged, 6 km line from Nieuport to the sea. The ground was too flooded for either side ever to attack but both sides' artillery kept up a constant bombardment. I don't know how Haworth met his death but an entry in the Marquis du Ruvigny's biographical register of the war dead, which ran out of steam after he'd recorded about 25,000 biographies, says Haworth was killed in action. It also says:
"A letter written on behalf of three of his friends stated: 'He was one of the most popular lads in the company for his cheerfulness and willingness in every work he undertook, and he will be greatly missed by his comrades'."
WITH FLAG UNFURLED
THE HEIGHTS OF DEATH HE TROD
INTO THE PEACE OF GOD
GUNNER JOHN ERNEST SALTER
Death is Swallowed up in Victory
Take comfort, ye who mourn a loved one, lost
Upon the battle-field,
Thank God for one, who, counting not the cost
Faced death and would not yield;
Thank God, although your eyes with tears are dim,
And sad your life and grey,
That howsoe'er the battle went for him
'Twas Victory that day.
With armour buckled on, and flag unfurled,
The heights of death he trod,
Translated from the warfare of the world
Into the peace of God
Sometimes I just don't know where people got their inscriptions from. Lines from this verse can be found on a number of war memorials all over the country and in death announcements and In Memoriam colums but the only place I've seen the whole poem, Death is Swallowed up in Victory, printed out is in 'Wycliffe and the War a School Record', and I'm pretty sure John Salter didn't go to Wycliffe.
Salter was the son of John Hambling Salter who ran a tailoring business in the High Street, South Brent Devon. He served with the 1st/1st (Warwick) Battery Royal Horse Artillery and was killed in action near Langemarck on the 4 August. On 17 August, The Western Times reported:
"The sad news has just been received by Mr JH Salter outfitter, that his eldest son, Sigr. JE Salter Warwickshire Regiment., has been killed in action in France. The greatest sympathy is felt for Mr ad Mrs Salter the deceased being a very bright young man, who was a great assistance in the business, and a favourite among all who knew him. He was a member of the Church choir in recognition of which the Dead March was played at Sunday's services."
GOOD WAS HIS HEART
AND IN HIS FRIENDSHIP SOUND
PATIENT IN PAIN
AND LOVED BY ALL AROUND
GUNNER ALBERT JOHNATHAN PURNELL
This is a fairly standard piece of memorial verse found during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century on headstones, funeral cards and In Memoriam columns. However, when found as the personal inscription of a soldier who died of wounds in a base hospital I always wonder whether the reference to pain might not be more relevant than usual.
Albert Purnell, a money-lender's clerk from Mile End in East London, served with the 62nd Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery. Equipped with heavy howitzers, their target was the enemy artillery, their strong points, ammunition dumps, roads and railways. And of course, they in turn were the enemy's target. A direct hit on a gun pit was devastating
The 62nd Siege Battery had been in Flanders since June 1917, fully involved in the Third Ypres Campaign. Purnell died of wounds in a base hospital in Wimereaux. Casualty Clearing Stations took the lesser wounded or those who were likely to die more quickly, base hospitals were for the severely wounded. In these circumstances, "patient in pain" has an ominous ring to it.
NO HATE WAS HIS
NO THIRST FOR FAME
WHEN FORTH TO DEATH
IN HONOUR WENT
PRIVATE WALTER PENFOLD
Walter Penfold's inscription is occasionally seen in In Memoriam columns and as a dedication on war memorials. It's not poetry but nor was it ever intended to be. It's anonymous author, signing himself 'Cambrensis', included it in a letter he wrote to The Spectator, which was published on 27 November 1915:
Sir, - In our universities, and everywhere, older men are thinking daily of the spirit in which our gallant youths, one after the other, have said farewell to their teachers and friends when leaving England for the field of battle, where many of them have bravely fallen. There were no loud heroics when they went: simply, "I know I ought to go, and I am going"; or, "I want to do my bit." The following four short lines (they are not poetry, nor even polished verse) attempt to suggest in the fewest and plainest words some faint shadow of the feeling graven deep on many a mind by the remembrance of those who have thus gone, and most especially of those who will not now return: -
No hate was theirs, no thirst for fame,
When forth to death by honour sent.
Life beckoned sweet; the great call came;
They knew their duty, and they went.
Walter Penfold served with 'C' Coy, 1st/4th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment, a territorial battalion drawn from East Grinstead and Crawley in Surrey. The battalion served in Gallipoli until the evacuation in December 1915; Penfold's medal card shows that he first entered a theatre of war - the Balkans - on 2 December 1915. In 1917 the battalion were in Palestine where Penfold was killed in the battle for Tell Khuweilfe, 3-7 November.
THERE'S A COTTAGE HOME
IN ENGLAND
WHERE HIS MOTHER SITS AND WEEPS
RIFLEMAN PETER THOMAS REDMOND
There's a lonely grave in Flanders
Where a brave young hero sleeps;
There's a cottage home in England
Where a mother sits and weeps.
"He nobly answered duty's call,
He gave his life for one and all."
Mrs Elizabeth Redmond chose her son's inscription, quoting from a popular piece of verse that appeared quite often in the In Memoriam columns of newspapers. However, Mr and Mrs Redmond did not have "A cottage home in England", they lived in a three-roomed dwelling in Corporation St, West Ham with six of their nine children who were aged from 26 to 12. This was in 1911 when seventeen-year-old Peter Redmond was working as a shop porter.
Redmond served with the 21st Battalion London Regiment (First Surrey Rifles) and died at a Field Ambulance Station on 3 May 1917 during the Second Battle of Ypres.
WHEN DAYS ARE DARK
AND FRIENDS ARE FEW
MY DARLING SON
I LONG FOR YOU
PRIVATE ANDREW MCARTHUR
This may be a very conventional memorial inscription, and it is, but it can still jolt the heart. Andrew McArthur emigrated to Australia when he was 18 leaving his widowed mother in Scotland. The very next year war broke out and he volunteered virtually immediately, a fact that is recorded in his service number - 39. It was 24 August 1914. He joined the 8th Battalion Australian Infantry and embarked with it from Australia on 19 October to serve in Egypt, defending the Suez Canal from the Turks.
On 25 April 1915 the 8th Battalion landed on Gallipoli, at Anzac Cove. It remained on Gallipoli until the evacuation in December when it returned to Egypt. Here the Battalion was divided to provide battle hardened soldiers for the newly formed 60th Battalion along with fresh recruits from Australia. McArthur joined the 60th.
In March the Battalion was sent to France and on 19 July went into its first action at Fromelles with disastrous consequences - 780 casualties out of a battalion of 887 men. McArthur must have been one of the survivors - because he was killed fifteen days later.
OUR LOSS IS GREAT
WE'LL NOT COMPLAIN
BUT HOPE IN HEAVEN
TO MEET AGAIN
PRIVATE FRANK ERNEST LUCY
"After moving out of the Salient on August 20th, the Battalion (1st) spent five days in camp at Caestre and then moved south by bus to "Regina Camp" near Ploegsteert. The Battalion spent the ensuing three months either in the front line facing Warneton ... or in billets and camps further back. ... No operation of any note was undertaken by the Battalion during that period, nor were the casualties heavy."
History of the Worcestershire Regiment 1694-1970
Private Frank Lucy served with the 1st Battalion the Worcestershire Regiment and died during the period mentioned. The Battalion were in the front line from 29 October to 2 November. Lucy died on 31 October yet the report only mentions that three soldiers were wounded during this spell in the trenches not that one of them was killed.
Berks Cemetery Extension is not a cemetery attached to a Field Ambulance dressing station or a Casualty Clearing Station so Lucy didn't die of wounds received in an earlier engagement. I'm not suggesting there's a mystery, just showing how indiviual deaths can be overlooked, which somehow makes Frank Lucy's headstone inscription rather more pathetic:
"Our loss is great
We'll not complain ... "
IT IS SAD BUT TRUE
I WONDER WHY
THE GOOD ARE ALWAYS
FIRST TO DIE
PRIVATE JOSEPH HILL
Joseph Hill was a 35 year old labourer from Aramac, Queensland, Australia, who enlisted in December 1915 and embarked for Europe in May 1916. It was his sister Jeannie who confirmed his inscription. It's a popular piece of verse that often appeared in the 'In Memorium' columns of local newspapers.
DEATH TO ME
SHORT WARNING GAVE
THEREFORE BE CAREFUL
HOW YOU LIVE
PRIVATE IVOR GRAFTON JONES
This is a classic gravestone inscription, which is usually followed by some sort of instruction to:
Prepare in time, do not delay
For no one knows their dying day.
Private Jones came from Ton Pentre, a small mining community in the Rhondda Valley, where non-conformism was very strong. He died from the effects of gas at a Casualty Clearing Station in Bailleul.
IF LOVE COULD HAVE SAVED HIM
HE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN KILLED
LIEUTENANT CHALONER FRANCIS TREVOR CHUTE
Lieutenant Chute's headstone was erected seven years after his death by which time his wife had remarried. Nevertheless she chose this inscription. It's a popular piece of memorial verse, which in its more usual form reads, 'If love could have saved him he would not have died'.