LIEUTENANT JOHN HENRY HANCOCK
ROYAL ENGINEERS
9TH JUNE 1917 AGE 22
BURIED: DICKEBUSCH NEW MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
This may not sound like a hymn but I think that it is, a misremembered quotation from the chorus of a revivalist hymn by Mrs Ophelia Adams:
He knows it all, He knows it all
My Father knows He knows it all
Thy bitter tears how fast they fall! -
He knows, My father knows it all.
John Hancock was killed by a high explosive shell on his way back to the rest camp at Reninghelst. Brought up in Ireland and educated at the protestant High School in Dublin, according to his parents he died for his country - pro patria.