CAPTAIN RICHARD JOHN CLARKE
8TH RAJPUTS ATTACHED 39TH GARHWAL RIFLES
10TH MARCH 1915 AGE 36
BURIED: LAVENTIE MILITARY CEMETERY, LA GORGUE, FRANCE
On 10 March 1915 the British army launched its first major planned offensive against the German lines. Soldiers from the Indian Army made up half the attacking force and suffered heavy casualties, the 39th Garhwal Rifles losing four officers and 120 men that day.
Captain Richard John Clarke, the son of Major Charles James Clarke, Royal Engineers, was born in Sydney, Australia in 1879. In 1911 he was serving with the 8th Rajputs in Hong Kong, and in 1914 he was in Peshawar. He was killed leading a frontal attack on the German trenches.
His inscription is adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, Requiem, which is inscribed on Stevenson's own grave in Samoa.
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and glady die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.