Oxenham Immortality
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BRITAIN BE PROUD
OF SUCH A SON
DEATHLESS THE FAME
THAT HE HAS WON
SERGEANT HAROLD WILLIAM MASTON
Maston's inscription comes from John Travers Cornwall, a poem by John Oxenham, published in 1917 in his book The Vision Splendid. Oxenham, the pen name of William Arthur Dunkerley, was, as Connie Ruzich has persuasively argued, the most popular poet of the First World War. He was certainly extremely popular with families at home, the next-of-kin who chose the personal inscriptions. Maston's inscription comes from verse 3:
Britain be proud of such a son!
Deathless the fame that he has won
Only a boy, but such a one!
Standing forever to his gun;
There was his duty to be done,
And he did it.
Fourteen-year-old Cornwall won the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Jutland by staying with his gun and awaiting orders whilst the rest of his gun crew were dead and, as Oxenham put it, 'mounded around him'.
Harold William Maston did not win a Victoria Cross but he had been awarded a Military Medal. This proved useful when it came to identifying ten soldiers found in unmarked graves on the old battlefield north of Ypres in March 1920. Three still had their identity discs but Maston could only be identified by his medal ribbon and his sergeant's chevrons. He had been killed in action in the attack on Broodseinde Ridge.
On Friday 7 March 1930 The Singleton Argus reported:
"Mr William Maston, a prominent Sydney businessman, died on Sunday while travelling to France to visit the grave of his son, Sergeant Harold Maston. The funeral took place at Aden on Tuesday."
"THAT, SETTING DUTY FIRST
HE WENT AT ONCE
AS TO A SACRAMENT
PRIVATE EDWARD BLACKBURN
Edward Blackburn volunteered in May 1915 when he was 18. He was keen, his elder brother Joseph, who was 21, didn't volunteer until that November. Edward's keenness can be sensed in the inscription his parents chose. It comes from The Empty Chair by John Oxenham, a prolific poet whose poems were very popular during the war and feature in many inscriptions.
The Empty Chair belonged to the dead volunteer, "that heroical great heart that sprang to duty's call". Oxenham's comfort to the bereaved is to ask:
Think! Would you wish that he had stayed
When all the rest The Call obeyed?
- That thought of self had held in thrall
His soul, and shrunk it mean and small?
Surely not, you should be glad: " - That setting duty first, he went at once, as to a sacrament".
Edward Blackburn served with the 12th Battalion Royal Fusiliers and died of wounds, judging from the war diary most probably caused by gas or HE shells, on 12 September 1917. His brother, Joseph Blackburn, who served with the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, survived the war.
HE DIED AS FEW MEN
GET THE CHANCE TO DIE
FIGHTING TO SAVE
A WORLD'S MORALITY
RIFLEMAN WILLIAM HAROLD THOMAS
Others may have died for their family, or God, King and country but Rifleman Thomas died "fighting to save a world's morality". The lines come from 'To You Have Have Lost', a poem by John Oxenham, the pseudonym of William Arthur Dunkerley (1852-1941). The poem comes from his book '"All's Well!" Some Helpful Verse for These Dark Days of War', which was first published in November 1915 and by May 1917 was in its eighteenth edition.
The poem, especially the first two verses, is the source of many headstone inscriptions and appears as a dedication on war memorials throughout Britain. These are the first two verses:
I know! I know! -
The ceaseless ache, the emptiness, the woe, -
The pang of loss, -
The strength that sinks beneath so sore a cross.
" - Heedless, and carelss, still the world wags on,
And leaves me broken ... Oh my son! my son!"
Yet - think of this! -
Yea, rather think on this! -
He died as few men get the chance to die,
Fighting for God and Right and Liberty; -
And such a death is Immortality.
In 1911 William Herbert Thomas was an apprentice marine insurance clerk living at home with his parents and six siblings in Bootle, Lancashire. He served with the 6th Battalion the King's Liverpool Regiment and was killed on the Somme in September 1916.