SECOND LIEUTENANT CLEMENT PERCY JOSCELYNE
SUFFOLK REGIMENT
10TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 32
BURIED: DOZINGHEM MILITARY CEMETERY, POPERINGE, BELGIUM
Joscelyne's inscription comes from the last verse of Robert Browning's final poem, Epilogue, from his final volume of verse, Asolando. The poem is not an uncommon source for inscriptions but they are usually lines chosen from verse two:
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
The poem is thought to be Browning's summary of himself, a man whose optimism about life never failed. The final verse carries that optimism to death:
"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed, - fight on, fare ever
There as here!"
Clement Joscelyne was a thirty-one-year-old married man with two children when he returned from Argentina in September 1916 in order to join up. I'm pretty sure the long arm of conscription couldn't have reached him there but he must have felt it was his duty. Commissioned into the Suffolk Regiment in June 1917 he went with it to France in July and was killed three months later. The battalion went up to the front on 9 October to repair the roads immediately behind the front line. The working party was under continuous enemy bombardment and Joscelyne was hit by shell fragments. He died the next day. Whilst he was in France, his wife gave birth to a son who he never saw. She chose his inscription.