Only Child
IN LOVING MEMORY
OF OUR ONLY CHILD DAVID
MOTHER AND FATHER
PRIVATE JOHN DAVID MCLAREN
There is a world of pathos in this dignified inscription. David McLaren's parents have neither enhanced nor disguised their grief with either flowery imagery or a profound quotation - they have just made the simple statement that he was their only child.
John David McLaren was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia - New Scotland - Canada on 19 April 1895. Scottish families had been congregating here since the Highland Clearances of the late eighteenth century. He enlisted in March 1916 just before his twenty-first birthday, giving his occupation as 'clerk'.
After seven months basic training he left for Britain in October 1916 and underwent almost twelve months further training before going to France on 19 August 1918. He joined his unit - the 2nd Canadian Machine Gun Battalion - in the field on 1 September. From then until the time of his death forty-one days later, the Canadians were continually involved in fighting that saw them cross the Canal du Nord and take the town of Cambrai. McLaren died on 11 October of wounds received that day. His casualty record card gives the details - 'GSW L shldr legs hand' - gun shot wounds in his left shoulder, legs and hand.
OUR BRAVE AND ONLY CHILD
AT REST
PRIVATE HERBERT DICKINSON QUICK
Herbert Quick volunteered in May 1915 when he was 18 and 10 months old. If they were under 19, soldiers had to have their parents' signed consent to serve abroad. Quick's attestation form notes that he has his father's consent. Quick did not have to enlist, there was never any conscription in Australia; how bitterly his parents must have regretted this when he was killed - their "brave and only child".
Quick served with the 3rd Australian Pioneers. He died in a general hospital in St Sever. There's no indication as to when he was wounded but from 21 October to 12 November 1917 the battalion were out of the line, billeted in the village of Wavrens resting and undergoing training. Prior to 21 October, the battalion had been engaged in building a mule track from Zonnebeke to Seine Road. Work began on 1 October and from then until the 21st between 1 and 12 ORs (other ranks) were wounded every day, except for the 11th, 12th and 17th when there were 'nil' casualties. This is probably when Quick was wounded.
WHERE THE LINES
SWEPT ON IN TRIUMPH
AND THE HEROES STAYED BEHIND
SECOND LIEUTENANT CLARENCE JOHN LOVELL
Lines of soldiers don't sweep on any more, whether in triumph or otherwise, that's just not how fighting occurs these days. Nor is it how it occurred during much of the First World War, the soldiers were stuck in trenches and when they tried sweeping out they were usually mown down by machine guns or caught by artillery. Eventually they developed the technique of snatching and holding and it was only at the very end, after 8 August 1918, that any triumphant 'sweeping' could be said to have taken place. By this time Clarence John Lovell had been dead for ten months - one of the heroes who 'stayed' behind.
The inscription sounds as though it's a quotation but it doesn't appear to be. It was composed by Lovell's father, John Charles Lovell, a baker and confectioner in Leamington Spa whose wife, Clement John's mother, is one of the very few women I've come across in my research for this project who also had a job. She was described in the 1911 census as 'manageress confectionary'; I would imagine in her husband's business.
Clement John Lovell, a teacher at Rugby Road School, Leamington was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery in February 1917. He served with the 274th Siege Battery, part of 62nd Brigade. The Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser announced his death on 27 October 1917, quoting how a fellow officer told his parents: "He was a splendid officer, capable and full of courage, and we feel his loss deeply". As would his parents - Clement John was their only child.
IN LOVING MEMORY
OF OUR ONLY CHILD
R.I.P.
SECOND LIEUTENANT JOHN GEORGE JOSEPH WILLIAMSON
"At 4 am on the 1st September orders were received to change direction left and advance on Wulverghem ... The advance encountered no serious opposition until the Kemmel-Neuve Eglise road was reached at 9 am. Here the right of the battalion was held up by heavy machine gun and trench mortar fire from the Neuve Eglise Ridge. Our trench mortars were brought to bear on the German machine guns and silenced those nearest the battalion. At 10.30 a forward movement was made, but B Company lost all its officers, killed or wounded, the right platoon of C Company lost 2nd Lieutenant Williamson killed and most of his men either killed or wounded."
The Campaigns and History of the Royal Irish Regiment 1902-1922
7th Battalion Royal Irish Regiment War Diaries
Sept 1/2 1918 W of Wulverghem
Casualties incurred during an attack by the Batt: -
Killed - 2 Officers and 15 OR
Wounded - 3 Officers and 55 OR and 5 OR missing
Letter from Williamson's Commanding Officer to his parents:
"There is no doubt at all that he was the best officer in the company, and he was very popular with everyone. His men would have followed him anywhere ... Whenever there was a difficulty, or an awkward job had to be tackled with judgment or tact, I always knew that I could rely on him to take it in hand and see it through properly."
Born, brought up and educated in Ireland where the family were Roman Catholic, Williamson went to RMC Sandhurst in May 1917, was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Royal Irish Regiment in April 1918, served with them in France and Flanders from June 1918 and was killed in action at Wulverghem that September. As the inscription says, he was his parents' only child.
ONLY CHILD OF
ABRAHAM AND ADA HARRISON
OF 52 DAIRY HOUSE ROAD
DERBY
CAPTAIN PERCY POOL HARRISON
Our image of an officer during the First World War can be so wrong. Percy Harrison was obviously an exceptionally able young man: he joined the army as a private in July 1915, was gazetted second lieutenant in the Sherwood Foresters in October 1915 and promoted captain in July 1917. But he did not come from the usual privileged background we associate with officers: his father was a stereotyper at a printing works in Derby and number 52 Dairy House Street was a red-brick terraced house in the Rose Hill district.
Harrison served with the 2nd/5th Battalion the Sherwood Foresters. In April 1916 it was sent to Ireland to quell the rebellion and then in February 1917 to France. He was severely wounded, the report says "received multiple wounds", on 26 September 1917 in the Sherwood Forester's attack on Otto Farm during the early stages of the Battle of Polygon Wood. Harrison died three weeks later in No. 2 Red Cross Hospital, Rouen.
Percy Harrison's inscription is nothing more than factual but it speaks of a world of total loss for his parents.
PASS FRIEND - ALL'S WELL!
LIEUTENANT STEPHEN REGINALD PARKE WALTER
"Pass friend - all's well!" is the sentry's reply to someone who gives the correct response to his challenge: "Halt, who goes there!". It is a not uncommon inscription on war memorials in this country with its double sense that we who pass by are able to do so because those who died made it safe for us. In this it reflects the Simonides-based epitaph: "Tell England ye that pass this monument, we died for her and here we rest content". In its second sense it implies that those who died correctly met the challenge of life and have therefore been allowed to pass into eternal life.
I know that Stephen Walter was educated at Wellington College otherwise I might have thought he was a Harrovian, perhaps his father was. This is because the refrain in one of Harrow's patriotic, school songs is, "Pass, Friend, All's well", which is used as a dedication on a memorial in the School. The second verse reads:
You stand where your brothers stood,
And pray where your brothers prayed,
Who fought with Death as brave men should,
Not boasting and not afraid.
For the blood and the lives that your brothers gave,
For the glory that you share,
The message comes from beyond the grave,
The challenge "Who goes there - you?
Pass, Friend, All's well."
There is another possible source, a piece of patriotic verse by "G.W.T.P." who is otherwise anonymous. This begins:
All's well, all's well with England!
Pass to your great reward,
All you whose lives were given
That freedom be restored.
Who faced your task undaunted,
And for our honour fell.
In answer to the challenge:
Pass, friend, all's well!
At 6.05 on the morning of 31 July 1917, DH5 no. B369, piloted by twenty-year-old Lieutenant Stephen Walter, took off from Droglandt to take part in a four-aircraft ground attack on the German lines. The cloud base was low and just north of Vlamertinge Walter's port wings were sheared off by an unseen balloon cable. The aircraft crashed to the ground and Walter was killed. Walter was an 'ace', having shot down six enemy aircraft during July 1917.
The only child of his parents, Stephen and Marion Walter, they dedicated a stained glass window to his memory in St Mary's East Farleigh and installed beside it his original battlefield grave marker, which his friends had made out of his aeroplane propeller.
WAITING
PRIVATE CLARENCE GEORGE TOPPER
When I first read this inscription I assumed it was a bereaved wife assuring her husband that she would always be waiting for him and their reunion. But it isn't, it's from a bereaved mother and father for their only child.
Clarence George Topper was 17 when he died of tetanus in hospital in Mudros Bay on the island of Lemnos. At 17 he was technically too young to be serving at the front and maybe he wasn't. When the Army realised you were underage, if they ever did, they either sent you home or used you behind the lines. Mudros Bay was a huge allied camp off the coast of Gallipoli and Topper could have been working there when a simple scratch gave him tetanus. He could equally as easily have been injured in the fighting on Gallipoli and got tetanus that way.
ALL OF HIMSELF
AND HIS PARENTS WAS GIVEN
WITH LOVE MOTHER AND DAD
PRIVATE CLIFFORD EATON KING
In both the 1901 and the 1911 census, Clifford Eaton is the only child listed in the household belonging to Charles Reeds King, Bank Manager, and his wife Laura Isobel, so it looks as though he was their only child. It would explain the epitaph they chose for him.
Clifford King volunteered in the first month of the war and went to France in December 1914. He was killed whilst the HAC were in the trenches between 24 March and 31 May 1915 when they lost two officers wounded and 125 other ranks killed and wounded. Like Private Frederick Bateman, see epitaph 300, he was originally buried in the gardens of Elzenhall Chateau. In September 1919 the War Graves Commission exhumed the sixteen bodies buried in the chateau's gardens and reburied them in Voormezeele Enclosure No. 3.
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.
IN MEMORY OF
MY DEARLY LOVED ONLY CHILD
MARYBOROUGH, VIC. A.
LANCE CORPORAL HARLEY BESWICK CROSS
"My dearly loved only child." Note that Lance Corporal Cross's father uses the word 'my' not 'our'. This is because Frederick Harley Cross was a widower and now his only child was dead.
BELOVED ONLY CHILD
WELL DONE THOU GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT
SECOND LIEUTENANT JOHN BENNETT LINDLEY
John Lindley was educated at Repton, joined the Inns of Court OTC in August 1915 when he was 18, was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery and went to France on 22 May 1916, the day after his 19th birthday. He died of wounds almost a year to the day later - 19 May 1917 - having been struck on the head by a shell splinter. This information comes from the Trafford War Dead website.
His inscription comes from the parable of the talents, St Matthew 25:21:
And he also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.
His Lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.
BELOVED ONLY CHILD OF
RN AND MRS WEEKES
OF MODBURY DEVON
SECOND LIEUTENANT REGINALD PENKIVIL OLIVE WEEKES
Nineteen-year-old Reginald Weekes, 10th Squadron RFC, was 'killed in aerial action returning from a bombing expedition'. His father, Captain Reginald Newton Weekes RAMC, was also serving in the war, as a surgeon at the 1st Southern General Hospital in Birmingham. I find it interesting when families feel the need to record who the casualty was in terms of their relationship with him, and to say where he lived. All this is recorded in the cemetery register; but not, I suppose, the fact that he was 'beloved' and not that he was his parents' 'only' child. For Captain and Mrs Weekes these were important details.
AGED 25
ONLY CHILD OF MAJOR GENERAL
SIR W.G. MACPHERSON
AND ELIZABETH ANNE MACPHERSON
LIEUTENANT DUNCAN STUART ROSS MACPHERSON
Major General William Grant Macpherson was the Colonel Commandant of the Royal Army Medical Corps and the author of its official history. His only child, Duncan Macpherson, was killed in action at Festubert on 23 November 1914. Although he was apparently never prepared to talk about the death of his son, as an old boy he was prepared to unveil the Fettes School war memorial. This was dedicated to the 246 old boys who lost their lives in the war, among them Duncan, his only child.
OUR ONLY CHILD
LOVE NEVER FAILETH
PRIVATE GEORGE HENRY JENNINGS BROWN
George Brown was the only child of the Reverend Thomas and Mrs Brown of St Stephen's Church, Walthamstow. They chose an extract from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8, in the American Standard Version, for their son's headstone inscription: Love ... beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth;
WE THANK GOD FOR
19 YEARS OF HAPPINESS
WITH OUR ONLY CHILD
SECOND LIEUTENANT THOMAS FREDERICK HENRY WAKE
The dignity and restraint of this inscription are heartbreaking. Thomas Wake was wounded on 9 April when the Germans launched their Spring Offensive in Flanders - Operation Georgette. He died the next day in a Casualty Clearing Station in Lijssenthoek.