PRIVATE PERCY BEALEY
ROYAL BERKSHIRE REGIMENT
8TH OCTOBER 1918 AGE 19
BURIED: FORENVILLE MILITARY CEMETERY, FRANCE
Nineteen-year-old Percy Bealey was killed in action in the taking of the village of Forceville on 8 October 1918. It must have been his father who chose his inscription. The name on the War Grave's form is Mrs Bealey, but Mrs Emma Bealey, his mother, died in 1912.
The inscription comes from the second line of John Henry Newman's famous hymn, Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom, which he wrote as a prayer. Newman longed for the consolation of Christian certitude in an age of doubt. The Bealey family, and the many other families who chose quotes from this hymn, longed for consolation in their grief and hoped to find it in God.
So long thy power hath blessed me, sure it still
Will lead me on;
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.