PRIVATE JOHN SHARP
CAMERON HIGHLANDERS
17TH OCTOBER 1918 AGE 21
BURIED: VAUX-ANDIGNY BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
John Sharp's inscription comes from verse three of the hymn, O For a Closer Walk With God, by the poet and hymn writer William Cowper (1731-1800):
What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill,
For John Sharp's family the words must have perfectly encapsulated their feelings - even though Cowper was not mourning the loss a loved one but the loss of God's love, which he felt he had forfeited through his own unworthiness.
Sharp came from Milesmark, a mining community near Dunfermline. His mother died in 1901 when he was five. His father, Frank Sharp, was a coal miner and it's possible to assume that John Sharp was too.
Sharp served with the 1st Battalion Cameron Highlanders, enlisting in 1916 when he became nineteen. He was a casualty of the opening day of the Battle of the Selle, 17 October 1918, in which the battalion took part as part of the 1st Division.