LANCE CORPORAL THOMAS EUSTACE
5TH CANADIAN MOUNTED RIFLES
28TH NOVEMBER 1915 AGE 28
BURIED: BERKS CEMETERY EXTENSION, BELGIUM
Thomas Eustace, born in Newfoundland in 1888, was a graduate of Bishop's University, Quebec, where he was studying for the ministry of the Church of England when he enlisted. According to the war diary, his squadron had just gone into the trenches at Hill 63 when he became the regiment's first casualty. The diary doesn't record how he died but mentions that German snipers had been very active. He was buried the next afternoon, "Simple burial service carried out. Corporal Hodge of the 4th CMR officiated." Corporal Hodge, a serving clergyman, was injured by a shell the following day and died of his wounds the day after that.
Thomas Eustace's inscription is not a direct quote but has echoes of Brutus's speech to Cassius when he declared, "For let the gods so speed me as I love the name of honour more than I fear death," [Julius Caeser, Act 1 Sc. 2] and also of the seventeenth-century poet, Richard Lovelace, whose 'To Lucasta, going to the Wars' ends: "I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I nor honour more".