GUNNER JOHN SAMPSON FORSYTH
ROYAL GARRISON ARTILLERY
14TH APRIL 1918 AGE 36
BURIED: MENDINGHEM MILITARY CEMETERY, PROVEN, BELGIUM
I never stand above a bier and see
The seal of death set on some well-loved face
But that I think, "One more to welcome me
When I shall cross the intervening space
Between this land and that one 'over there';
One more to make the strange Beyond seem fair".
The Beyond v3
Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1850-1919
Ella Wheeler Wilcox was a popular American poet whose status can be judged by the fact that none of her poetry was included in The Oxford Book of American Verse (1950) and yet fourteen of her poems were published in Best Loved Poems of America (1936). Gunner Forsyth's wife, Ada Nellie Forsyth, quoted from The Beyond.
According to the Burnley Express of 24 April 1918, Forsyth , who joined up in June 1916 and was mobilised in February 1917, died of multiple gun shot wounds. His service record shows that these were received on 12 April 1918. He died two days later.
Ada and John Forsyth were married in December 1905, He was a grocer, tea and drapery dealer in Burnley. Childless at the time of the 1911 census, they had a daughter in July 1914 who was therefore three when her father died. Ada Forsyth died in 1974, fifty-six years after her husband.
And so for me there is no sting to death,
And so the grave has lost its victory.
It is but crossing - with a bated breath,
And white, set face - a little strip of sea.
To find the loved ones waiting on the shore
More beautiful, more precious than before.