Mother
JAMIE
HE WAS A' THE WORLD
TAE ME
MOTHER
Unidentified
TELEGRAM to Gow, Parkhouse Lane, Duke St, Glasgow
10.10.1918
Regret 14482 Gow Cameron Highlanders reported dangerously ill gun shot wounds groin penetrating abdomen at 3 Australian Casualty Station France. Regret permission to visit him cannot be granted.
James Gow enlisted on 9 November 1914 and disembarked in France on 22 February 1915. This is such rapid training period that I wonder whether he was already a territorial soldier. He served throughout the war with the Cameron Highlanders being invalided home with cellulitis in December 1916 and hospitalised for 74 days with malaria in 1917. On recovering he was sent to France again, disembarking on 21 June 1918 and joining the 5th Battalion Cameron Highlanders. He was wounded on 5 October and died just over a month later. All this information comes from Gow's service file which is one of the few to have survived.
The families of 'dangerously ill" soldiers were regularly given permission to visit them in the base hospitals in France. The Army would even pay the fares of those who would otherwise have been unable to afford it. Why Mrs Gow should have been refused permission to visit her son cannot be known but it is unusual.
Andrew and Jemima Gow had five children, four of them sons, James was the fourth child. The family lived in Glasgow where Andrew, the father, was a prison warder. At the time of his enlistment, James was a clerk.
Jemima chose her son's inscription - plain, simple and so affecting, the Scottish dialect adding to its simple honesty. Was he her favourite child?
OH TO HAVE CLASPT
YOUR HAND DEAR HERBERT
TO HAVE BROUGHT YOU HOME
TO REST. (MOTHER)
PRIVATE HERBERT DOWNS
Herbert Downs was killed in action during the crossing of the Piave River on 27 October 1918. He was buried in the Italian village of Tezze. It's a long way from Stockport Cheshire where his parents and brothers and sisters lived.
You can see his mother's distress in the inscription she chose. The British Army banned the repatriation of bodies early in 1915 and reinforced this ban after the war ended. It was deeply unpopular and caused much angry criticism, especially from those families who could easily have afforded to pay to repatriate the bodies of their own family members.
The ban remained in force however, the authorities determined that the war cemeteries were not going to be just for those whose families couldn't afford to repatriate their bodies. This was one of the many reasons why the Commission also did not permit private headstones since this would distinguish the rich dead from the poor dead and the Commission wanted to emphasise the equality of sacrifice of all the dead. Everyone had to accept a regulation Imperial War Graves Commission headstone, which caused more distress, but perhaps by way of compensation families were allowed to personalise the headstone with their choice of inscription.
Herbert Downs was the third of his parents five children. Father, Matthew Downs, was a builders' labourer. Herbert initially joined the 1/6th Cheshire Regiment but was transferred to the Northumberland Fusiliers and went with them to Italy in November 1917.
Eight days after HerbertDown's death the Austrians signed an armistice - the war on the Austro-Italian front was over.
WHO KNOWS AT WHAT GREAT COST
OUR LIBERTY WAS WON?
A MOTHER WHO HAS LOST
HER ONLY SON
PRIVATE DAVID JOHN JONES
Private Johns was killed in action on the 29 September 1918 in the attack on the St Quentin Canal. His body was not discovered until December 1926 when it was found with five other bodies at map reference 62c.F.12.a.65.75. There was no cross on the grave so it hadn't been previously registered. The body was identified by "Clothing, boots, numerals and two paper discs". The form asks "Were any effects forwarded to base?" and the answer was "Yes. Gold cased watch guaranteed 20 years. Discs fell to powder after being exposed. See covering letter."
There is an interesting note at the bottom of the form: "Reward is not to be paid in this case as the as the remains were reported by the American Graves Services, Q.M.C. in Europe". This refers to the fact that French and Belgian farmers were paid for each body they discovered to discourage them from failing to report it and just ploughing it back in to the ground.
David Jones was the only son of Thomas and Elizabeth Jones who ran the Junction Hotel in Abercynon, Glamorganshire. In 1911 David Jones was assisting his parents in the business. By the time his body was discovered his father was dead.
EVER IN MY THOUGHTS
MY ONLY CHILD
MOTHER
SECOND LIEUTENANT ERNEST GEORGE DUNN
Born in Clapton, London in the first quarter of 1898 and educated at Hackney Downs School, Ernest Dunn was just 19 when, according to his medal index card, he went to France in May 1917. He was killed the following month. His parents' only child; his father had died in 1913.
Dunn enlisted originally in the Artists Rifles but in January 1916 received a commission in the 10th Battalion The King's Liverpool Regiment, the Liverpool Scottish. At the time of his death he was attached to the Machine Gun Corps. The Hackney Downs School memorial site, records that Dunn was killed by a shell.
Originally buried where he died, Dunn's body was exhumed and reburied at Orchard Dump Cemetery in March 1920. The site of the cemetery was donated to the War Graves Commission by the widow of a Captain in the French 72nd Infantry killed in action in August 1914.
EIGHT OF MY SONS
ANSWERED DUTY'S CALL
GOOD-BY, TOM
THE FIRST TO FALL. MOTHER
Unidentified
Mrs Alice Whelan had thirteen children of whom nine survived to adulthood. Widowed before 1911 she and her one daughter described their occupations as ironers.
Thomas was her eldest child. She says of him in the War Graves Commission records that he had had 15 years military service. It is likely that this service had come to the end before the war and that he rejoined on the outbreak. He died of wounds in the hospital centre of St Sever on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
Thomas was 'the first to fall'. Two years later James Whelan, sixteen years younger than his older brother, died of wounds close to the front line on 26 June 1918.
Eight of my sons
Answered the call
You, dear Jim, were the second
To fall - sleep on
IN MEMORY OF
MY SWEET IDEAL
MUMMIE
CAPTAIN DURHAM DONALD GEORGE HALL
This is a rather touchingly incongruous inscription for Captain Hall RFC, whose Military Cross was awarded for conspicuous gallantry in flying not only in the worst weather and at very low altitudes, but once at an extremely low altitude and under very heavy enemy fire in order to range the artillery's guns. But then 'mummie', who chose it, was quite an usual woman.
Born Ethel Beatrice Lloyd in Toungoo, Burma, her father died when she was two. The next time she surfaces it is as Ethel Sydney performing in a musical in New York. In the 1901 census, as Ethel B Hall, actress, she is staying in digs in Fylde, Blackpool with her three-year-old son Durham Donald George Hall. After this the records show that she divorced Sydney Donald Edward Hall in 1903 and married Samuel Robinson Oliver who divorced her in 1912 at which point she married the co-respondent, John Upston Gaskell. He left her in 1923 and the following year she married Alastair Ian Matheson who, born in 1899, was just younger than her son would have been.
You can perhaps see why her son was her 'sweet ideal'.
Durham Donald George Hall was born in 1898 and educated at Charterhouse. He left school in the summer of 1914 and was commissioned into the Yorkshire Regiment before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps. In January 1918 he went to France with the newly formed 80 Squadron. On the 26 March he failed to return from a patrol. Witnesses saw him bring his plane down near Albert. It is thought it had been damaged by enemy ground fire. Hall had been wounded and died of his wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station the next day.
HIS EXAMPLE
CAN NEVER BE LOST
TELL MY MOTHER FOR ME
I DIED AT MY POST
PRIVATE OLIVER RUMBLE HAY HAY
9th Battalion Australian Infantry War Diary
"6.3.1918
HOLLEBEKE, Belgium
Enemy commenced a heavy gas shell bombardment at about 4 pm which lasted approximately four hours. Area shelled was mainly the reserve line in the vicinity of Battalion H.Q. and 'D' Company.
7.3.1918
As a result of yesterday's bombardment the following officers [9] in addition to about 150 other ranks were evacuated gassed."
The next day, Private Hay was admitted to a Casualty Clearing Station suffering from mustard gas poisoning. He died on the 13th.
The Hays received the news that their son had been wounded on the 18 March, five days after his death. Ten days later, on 27 March, a notice appeared in their local newspaper, the Townsville Daily Bulletin, saying:
"Mr W Hay, Prairie, who for many years was a very prominent member of the Salvation Army in Charter Towers has received the distressing news of the death in France of his son, Oliver, Rumble Hay, who was killed by gas shells on March 13th."
The effects of mustard gas take some time to develop. First, several hours after exposure, a mild skin irritation appears. Eventually the affected areas turn yellow and agonising blisters develop. The eyes become red, sore and runny and extreme pain and sometimes blindness can follow. These symptoms can be accompanied by nasal congestion, sinus pain, hoarseness, coughing and in extreme cases respiratory failure. Hay was an extreme case. He took seven days to die but not before he had sent his mother a proud message - 'I died at my post'.
Hay, a drover, who had been born in Charter Towers, enlisted on 29 June 1916. He embarked from Brisbane on 21 October 1916 and arrived in England on 10 January 1917. He spent a month in hospital with mumps and then joined the 9th Battalion in France on 3 May 1917.
ALWAYS THINKING OF YOU
MOTHER
PRIVATE ALBERT SPRACKLAN
Mrs Alice Spracklan has written a very simple but affecting personal inscription for her son, and by personal I mean personal. Albert had a father, Theodore, two brothers, William and Walter, and a sister Hilda but the message is from her, his mother - she just wants to tell him that she is always thinking of him.
The Spracklans lived in Five Bells, Watchet, Somerset where father was a carter on a farm and Albert was a farm labourer.
Unlike his brothers, Albert was not an early volunteer; he was not entitled to the 1914 or 1915 Star.. He served with the 1st/5th Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment, which after service in Italy, returned to the Western Front on 11 September 1918. The war diary records that on 5 October:
"The Battn. marched in fighting order to Lormisset (4 miles) coming under occasional salvos of 5.9s whilst passing Grandcourt & suffering 5 casualties."
Later in the afternoon, the battalion received orders to take Beaurevoir, "which 2 Brigades had failed to take". At 18.40, zero hour, they set off following a creeping barrage but "A. Coy. from over keenness advanced into our barrage, followed by B Coy on the left. Although suffering several casualties the Coys were thus able to surprise a M.G. nest holding the embankment whilst still taking cover from our barrage."
The battalion pushed on, meeting little resistance except from isolated machine guns and snipers. Casualties by the end of the engagement were one officer seriously wounded and one killed by the British barrage, nine other ranks killed, forty-two wounded and one missing.
Spracklan is buried in Beaurevoir Communel Cemetery British Extension, a battlefield cemetery, where 35 of the total 82 casualties were killed, like him, on 5th October 1918.
"IF ONLY" FROM MUM
PRIVATE RCHARD BURR
This is not a wistful regret for a time that has gone – although it could well be – but the title of a sonnet by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) 'If Only':
If I might only love my God and die!
But now he bids me love Him and live on,
Now when the bloom of all my life is gone,
The pleasant half of life has quite gone by.
My tree of hope is lopped that spread so high,
And I forget how summer glowed and shone,
Mrs Emily Burr chose the inscription for her son, Richard, the third of her six children. John, his older brother, had been killed three years earlier at Loos on 27 September 1915 whilst serving in the 1st Battalion Scots Guards. He has no grave and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial.
Born in October 1898, Richard Burr was called up in October 1916 and deployed to France in October 1917. He served with the 4th Battalion London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers) and was killed in the trenches on 8 August 1918.
Battalion War Diary 4th-8th August
Bn in front line trenches. The period passed unusually quietly, there being very little artillery activity by the enemy. Our patrols were very active during the hours of darkness. Defences were strengthened and trenches improved.
IN LIFE I FEAR FOR MYSELF
IN DEATH
I FEAR FOR MY MOTHER
MOTHER
GUNNER THOMAS HANSON
Thomas Hanson's mother wanted to demonstrate her son's consideration towards her in the inscription she chose for his headstone. Presumably he had expressed these fears to her, fearing how she would cope with his death.
Hanson, a sheep overseer whose family emigrated to Australia sometime after the 1901 census, enlisted in October 1916. He reached Britain in July 1917, embarked for France in September and was killed in October.
On 22 March 1918, Driver FJ Brophy told the Red Cross Enquiry Bureau:
"I did not see the casualty, but I saw his dead body soon after it happened. He was unloading a waggon just in front of Zillebeke, when he was caught by a piece of shell, which entered his back and went through his heart, death was instantaneous. I knew him very well, he was the only man of this name in the battery."
Gunner AS Miller reported on 8 March 1918:
"I saw him killed at the Half-way House, near Ypres. He was caught by pieces of shell which hit him about the chest, death being instantaneous. He had not been with the battery very long, as he was a new reinforcement."
And how did Thomas Hanson's mother cope with his death? In May 1920 she sailed to England from where she went to France to visit his grave, something very few Australian mothers would have been able to afford to do.
It's strange how you can build up a picture of a person - and be wrong. I had Mrs Hanson down as a poor widow and Thomas as her only son. Thomas was her only son but Mrs Hanson was a remarried divorcee. The information comes from a reply to a letter the army authorities had written asking for clarification about Thomas Hanson's father. Her new husband replied:
"I have to inform you that the father of the late soldier is still alive, as far as I know, but am absolutely ignorant of his address. I also have to inform you that Mrs Hanson divorced her husband some years ago and has been married to me since then."
Mr FW Gregory 24 May 1920
"I'M ALL RIGHT MOTHER
CHEERIO"
LIEUTENANT HAROLD ROWLAND HILL
What would you say to your mother as you signed off the letter you were writing to her just before you went up into the front line? You'd tell her that you were OK. The inscription is in quotation marks, surely the words are therefore Hill's, and given the fact that they have been used for his inscription, they must be something like the last words he wrote to her.
On the night of the 1st/2nd October the Battalion arrived at Esplanade Saps, Zonneke. Its effective strength was was 35 officers and 989 other ranks. They spent the 3rd, 'In Front Line' and then on the night of the 3rd/4th the War Dairy records:
"Jumping off tape was laid by midnight along frontage and along Coy. flanks. The Battalion was on same by 4.30am on 4th. At zero the Bn. closed up to within 50 yards of barrage and fought its way to the objective where it consolidated."
On the 7th October the battalion moved back into the support lines. Their casualties for this period were two officers and 38 other ranks killed, 10 officers and 185 other ranks wounded and 16 other ranks missing.
Witnesses recorded in the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau files inform us of Hill's fate:
"Lieutenant Hill was killed before the hopover just behind Zonnebeke, near Zonnebeke Church. He was with Brigade Sig. at the time in charge of 25th Hd. Qrts. Sig."
"He led the 7th Bde. Signallers advance party over the top, near Zonnebeke about 6.30 am on Oct. 4/17. I was quite close to him when he was severely wounded during the heavy barrage, and was taken by S/Bs to the Menin Road Hospital near the Comforts Fund."
"I helped to bandage Lt. Hill. He was so badly wounded in the head and hit almost allover his body too, that he could not have lived more than an hour if that. Afterwards I heard that he had lived nearly two hours."
"Mr Hill went over the morning of the 4th October with a party of Bde. Sigs and we, the Battn Sigs were not with him at the time he was hit. But from particulars I gathered from one of our A.M.C. men I think he passed through the battalion Dressing Station unconscious but still alive, and died on the stretcher on the way to the A.D.S."
I RAISED MY BOY
TO BE A SOLDIER
MOTHER
PRIVATE MOSTYN SCOTT SANDS
I am grateful to Eric McGeer for drawing my attention to this inscription and its meaning in his article Approaches to Canadian Epitaphs of the Great War. It sounds like a simple statement of fact - I raised my boy to be a soldier - but actually it's a proud reposte to a popular American anti-war song I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier. I shall quote the whole song here because, published early in 1915, it became a significant factor in keeping America out of the war for so long.
Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,
Who may never return again.
Ten million mother's hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Heads bowed in sorrow
In her lonely years,
I heard a mother murmur thru' her tears:
Chorus
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It's time to lay the sword and gun away.
There's be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."
What victory can cheer a mother's heart,
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All he cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
Remember that my boy belongs to me!
Chorus
In the light of this song it's significant that Mrs Sands signs the epitaph, 'Mother'.
Private Sands was killed in a German night attack on the Canadian trenches. The 28th Battalion Canadian Infantry War Diary records that as the 19th Battalion began to relieve them on the night of the 7th/8th May the Germans attacked and penetrated their lines. They were driven back by those of the 28th who hadn't yet left the trenches, together with the newly arrived 19th. Sands must have been among the soldiers of the 28th who hadn't yet left.
DARLING DUDLEY
LAST YEAR BUT A BOY
BUT ENGLAND'S MARTYR NOW
MOTHER
SECOND LIEUTENANT DUDLEY HURST-BROWN
Dudley Hurst-Brown celebrated his eighteenth birthday on 8 June, was wounded in action five days later and died two days after this. He had been at the front for five months, correctly predicting in the last letter his parents received from him that he saw "but little chance of ever safely getting home again".
His parents' inscription speaks the truth, "last year but a boy",. Last year Hurst-Brown had been 17, he was only 18 and seven days when he was killed. This was far too young to be at the front, the rule was 19, unless you had your parents' signed permission, which he must have done. In fact more than just their permission as his father had actively pulled strings to get him into the army. Dudley Hurst-Brown was still at school when the war broke out, with plans to study for another year, go to Oxford and then join the army. The war changed all this and he decided he wanted to join up immediately - except at 17 he was too young. So his father wrote to the Director of Military Training at the War Office and Dudley was commissioned into the Special Reserve on the 11 August, just one week after the outbreak of war.
'Martyr' is an interesting word. It's the first time it's been used in an inscription in this project, unless as a quote from the Te Deum. The Hurst-Browns use the word for both their sons, Dudley's elder brother, Cecil, died of wounds on 25 September 1915. Were they martyrs? In that they were both volunteers, and both therefore willingly gave themselves to a cause they believed in, knowing that it could lead to their deaths, yes they were.
Dudley and Cecil's inscriptions were virtually identical but with two interesting differences: Cecil is addressed as "Our darling Cecil", Dudley as "Darling Dudley". Dudley's finishes with the word "Mother", which is not there on Cecil's - yet both were signed for by Mr W Hurst-Brown, their father.
Cecil Hurst-Brown is commemorated on Westminster School's First World War website
Dudley Hurst-Brown is commemorated on the Winchester College First World War website.
PETER, I LOVED YOU IN LIFE
YOU ARE DEAR TO ME STILL
PRIVATE PETER FENTON
Peter Fenton was his parents' eldest child. In 1901 he had six younger siblings. Killed in action in the 51st Highland Division's attack on Beaumont Hamel on 13 November, he was buried in Y Ravine Cemetery where his grave was subsequently lost. There are now more than 400 men buried in the cemetery of which only 275 are identified burials and 53 have special memorials, like Peter Fenton's. These are headstones that look identical to the standard War Graves Commission headstone but have carved on them the words: 'Known to be buried in this cemetery'.
Peter's mother, Mrs Christina Fenton, chose his inscription, a touching declaration of love and affection that, written in the first person, makes no reference to either his father or his siblings. A gravestone in Dunfermline Cemetery testifies to the fact that James Fenton, Peter's father, was still alive. He died in 1934.
Erected by Christina Hutchison
In memory of
Her dear husband
James Fenton
Died 3rd Sept. 1934 aged 77
Also their son
Peter
Killed in the Great War
13th Nov. 1916 aged 28
Also their daughters
Nettie
Died 27th July 1916 aged 21
Maggie
Died in infancy
Also the above
Christina Hutchison
Died 9th April 1946 aged 77
I LOVE HIM STILL
PRIVATE ARTHUR H JACKSON
Sometimes it is the simplest words that are the most moving - "I love him still". This is what Mrs Betsy Jackson, Private Jackson's mother, wanted to say on his headstone and this is what she did say.
Life does not appear to have been easy for Betsy Jackson. In the 1881 census she is the wife of Samuel Jackson, agricultural labourer, and the mother of two children, William and Arthur. In the 1891 census, William and Arthur are inmates of the workhouse in Driffield, Yorkshire, whilst Betsy and her eight-year-old daughter, Alice, are living in North Dalton where Betsy is a charwoman and the head of the household. Betsy is still a charwoman in 1901 and she and Alice are still living in North Dalton but unmarried Alice is the mother of an eight-month-old son, Arthur E Jackson. And in 1911 Alice is in the Driffield workhouse having given birth to another son two days earlier.
None of this is an attempt to pass judgement but just to show how things were in the Jackson family - not easy. When the war broke out William Jackson joined the navy and Arthur the 13th Battalion the East Yorkshire Regiment, the 3rd Hull's Pals, which was formed in August 1914. After training the regiment went to Egypt in December 1915 and were then transferred to France in May 1916, where Arthur was killed three months later.
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.
I OWE ALL
TO MY ANGEL MOTHER
PRIVATE DONALD ANGUS MORRISON
I find this kind of inscription so interesting: interesting because it's not the the sort of thing people usually say on headstones; interesting because it was Morrison's father who confirmed it, and interesting because I can't think what it really means. What is obvious, however, is that David Morrison loved his mother and that his father was happy to confirm this on his son's headstone.
David Morrison was a police constable in Roberta, Nova Scotia. He enlisted in September 1914 and arrived in France with the first Canadian Contingent on 12 February 1915. He died of wounds in hospital at Boulogne three months later on 8 May.
Morrison served with the 16th Battalion Canadian Infantry, the Canadian Scottish, which was involved in the action on 22-23 April at Gravenstafel Ridge. It was here that the Germans first successfully used chlorine gas along a four mile section of the line held by French colonial troops. The French suffered something in the region of 6,000 casualties. Without knowing what had happened, the Battalion War Diary reported, "French refugees, pouring in and French soldiers principally Zoaves in flight. Looked as if French had been routed ... We were to check the German advance". The writer finished the report of the day by concluding that it had been 'a very arduous time' and by referring to the 'many wounded and dead'. This could have been when Morrison was wounded.
COULD I BUT KNEEL BESIDE
THE GRAVE OF HIM
WE LOVED SO DEAR
HIS MOTHER
BOMBARDIER WILLIAM J SWETMAN
Mrs Swetman expressed a regret that was common to so many families. The decision not to repatriate the bodies of soldiers - actually, it goes further than that - the decision to forbid the repatriation of soldiers' bodies, caused families much extra grief, but the War Graves Commission was intransigent. They did not want there to be any division between those who could afford to repatriate their relation's and those who couldn't. This was one of the reasons they would not allow private headstones in their cemeteries - all the dead were to be treated equally, regardless of wealth, rank or social status.
A MOTHER'S LOVE LIES HERE
PRIVATE WILLAIM OGSTON CRAIB
The report of William Craib's death in the Aberdeen Evening Express refes to both his parents so it's interesting that the inscription only refers to his mother. However, the privileging of mothers' grief is something that is noticeable in a number of personal inscriptions.
In a sense, Mrs Mary Craib had already lost her son once. Born in Aberdeen, William Craib left school, worked in the docks and then went to Canada, to work on the Grand Trunk Railway. In 1913 he went to Australia and when he enlisted in April 1915 he was working at the Brisbane gasworks. Craib sailed for Egypt in May, served in Gallipoli from September to December and was then transferred with the 26th Battalion to the Western Front, arriving in France in March 1916. Between 28 July to 7 August the 26th Battalion took part in the battle of Pozieres; Craib died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station in Puchevillers on the 6th.
Three months earlier the Craigs had finally learnt that their eldest son, George, missing in action since the 25 September, was dead, killed at the battle of Loos. George's body was never found so he has neither grave nor inscription.
MOTHER IS PROUD
OF HER HERO, THOUGH HE
WAS ONLY A PRIVATE
PRIVATE HAROLD CONSORT SMITH
Harold Smith was 18 and 6 months when he died of wounds in an assault on the Turkish positions at Gaba Tepe in Gallipoli. This means that he can only have been 17 when he enlisted and embarked on board HMAT Geelong from Hobart on 20 October 1914.
I'm pretty sure that Harold assumed the surname Smith and that he was actually Harold Consort Battenburg Street, born in Mathinna, Tasmania to David Charles and Mary Eliza Ellen Street, who are listed as his parents in the War Graves Commission records. Harold 'Smith' was underage when he enlisted and underage when he went overseas. His alias makes me wonder whether his parents knew what he was doing. Their epitaph, confirmed by his mother, certainly grants him posthumous approval.
MY DARLING
PRIVATE DAVID HEATHCOTE MELROSE ROBERTSON
"My darling" not our darling, although David Robertson's father was still alive. It was David's mother, Mrs Emma Jane Roberston, who filled in the form confirming the inscription and she wrote "My darling". Father, Mr James Robertson, didn't die until 1950 and he's buried under a headstone which describes him as the beloved father of David, but nevertheless his son's headstone inscription only reads "My darling".
David Robertson was a motor mechanic from Ballarat, Victoria. He enlisted at the age of 18 in July 1915, and was sent to Gallipoli in August where he was wounded and spent some time in hospital on Malta. After the evacuation from Gallipoli in January 1916, the Battalion regrouped in Egypt and then were sent to France in March where they took part in the Somme campaign. In 1917 were sent to the Ypres front. David was killed in action at Zonnebeke during the Battle of Passchendale on 22/23 September. According to his mother, on the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia, he was "twenty and one week" when he died, so not 21 as it says on the War Graves' records. Initially buried without being identified, his body was later exhumed from map reference 28.J.@.d.7.2, identified by the clothing and correspondence on it, and reburied in Sanctuary Wood Cemetery.
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.
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.
A MOTHER'S DARLING
CORPORAL WILLIAM JOHN SAVAGE
William Savage was a 25 year old labourer from Port Adelaide, South Australia who enlisted when the 27th Battalion was formed there in March 1915. The Battalion went to Gallipoli in September 1915 and then to France early in 1916. Savage was killed in their final action of the war, the attempt to break the Beaurevoir Line, Germany's last line of defence, the last strand of the Hindenburg Line. The fighting was ferocious despite the fact, or maybe because of the fact, that the end for Germany was so near. Savage was killed on the 3rd and the line was finally broken late on the evening of the 5th. With the Hindenburg Line breached, the high ground behind it captured, the ground before the Allies now lay open before them.
The war was virtually over but Mrs Savage's 'darling' was dead. I love these simple, unsophisticated inscriptions, they are so eloquent. The War Grave Commission's records indicate that both William Savage's parents were still alive but it is as his mother's darling that he is commemorated.
LOVE AND KISSES FROM MOTHER
PRIVATE JAMES DONNELLY
James Donnelly was nineteen when he died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station at Roisel on 19 October 1918. His medal index card shows that he was entitled to the 1915 Star having served in a theatre of war, identified as '2b' - Gallipoli and the Aegean Islands - since 28 August 1915. At this point he can have been no more than 16 since he was eleven on the day the Irish census was taken on 2 April 1911.
Donnelly, born in Curragh, Co. Kildare, was the son of James and Ann Donnelly. His father died before he was two and in 1911 his mother had been married for nine years to William Patterson, a bar owner in Newbridge Co. Kildare. There were no living children from this marriage and it would appear that James was her only child.
On the 16 October the 2nd Battalion Dublin Fusiliers took over the front line at Saint Benin just south of Le Cateau. On the morning of the 17th they crossed the River Selle in the face of heavy machine gun fire and two attempted German counter-attacks. They were relieved in the early hours of the 19th having suffered 206 casualties of whom thirty-seven were dead. Donnelly died of wounds later that same day.
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.
O GOD GIVE ME
THE HERO'S MOTHER
STRENGTH TO SAY
THY WILL BE DONE
PRIVATE THOMAS ELWELL
'Thy will be done' was one of the most popular of all headstone inscriptions. Mrs Elwell's variation shows how hard it was for her to accept her son's death, even if it was God's will.
A MOTHER'S HEART IS BURIED
WITH HER DEAR SOLDIER SON
PRIVATE THOMAS JOSEPH DAWES
Thomas Dawes mother both chose his inscription and filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia. On the latter, in the section which asks whether there's any other biographical information likely to be of interest to historians of the AIF, Mrs Dawes tells how her son was very ill on the journey out from Australia and, believing himself to be dying, wrote a letter to his mother, put it in a bottle and threw it overboard. Four months later the bottle came ashore on the west coast of Australia and the letter was posted on to his mother in Victoria.
Eleven days after her son's death, Mrs Dawes inserted a death anouncement in her local paper, the Bendigo Advertiser; it concludes with a long memorial verse which reveals her pain.
When the flags are o'er the roadways
And the troops come marching home,
And the sweethearts lean to bless them
And the mothers to caress them.
O God, have pity for the waiting ones
Whose boys can never come.
DARLING JACK
HOW I MISS YOU
NOBODY KNOWS BUT ME
MOTHER
PRIVATE JOHN FAGAN
A deeply personal inscription from a mother whose son is buried 10,000 miles away from his home in Geelong, Australia. She uses her son's headstone to send him a private message of grief and longing. 'Nobody knows but me Mother', even though the form confirming the inscription was signed by her husband, John's father.
THY WILL BE DONE
ONE WHO LOVED HIS MOTHER
AND HIS MOTHER LOVED HIM
PRIVATE ALFRED BRITTEN
An article in The Observer about soldiers' wills on 26 October 2014 confirms what a study of headstone inscriptions already reveals, that many soldiers had a special relationship with their mother, one that they were very happy to acknowledge.