GUNNER REGINALD JOHN PERRY CUFF
ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY
26TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 23
BURIED: MENDINGHEM MILITARY CEMETERY, PROVEN, BELGIUM
This is a quotation from a short story by Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), 'What Men Live By', written in 1885. An angel, punished for failing to obey God's order, was forced to live as a man until he could answer three questions: 'What dwells in man', 'What is not given to man' and 'What do men live by'. After six years on earth the angel has the answers. What dwells in man is love, what is not given to man is to know his own needs, and what men live by is love: 'I have learnt that all men live not by care for themselves but by love'. In explaining his answer to the man who has given him shelter, the angel says:
'I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all. I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God in him, for God is love.'
Reginald John Perry Cuff, a junior shipping clerk in the 1911 census, joined the army in 1916, served with the 286th Brigade Royal Field Artillery and died of wounds in one of the four Casualty Clearing Stations at Proven. His father, John Pitman Cuff a cabinet maker in Toxteth, Liverpool, chose his inscription. I have not come across it before. It makes a subtle criticism, or perhaps not such a subtle criticism, of mankind for allowing itself to descend into savage warfare.