PRIVATE LAURANCE HERBERT HEBDITCH
24TH BN LONDON REGIMENT
14TH OCTOBER 1918 AGE 21
BURIED: AUBERS RIDGE BRITISH CEMETERY, AUBERS, FRANCE
Although the War Graves Commission had given itself the right to censor inscriptions, and there is evidence in one of my previous blog posts that it did, it appears to have been happy to allow inscriptions that criticised war in general, this war in particular, and even those that questioned the cause for which men had died. Private Hebditch's father rails against war, echoing the sentiments of General William Tecumseh Sherman the Union general famous for the devastation he caused on his march through Georgia during the American Civil War, "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it". And there are other inscriptions here that one might have thought the Commission considered very carefully before permitting - which to its credit it did. This list will no doubt grow as the Epitaphs of the Great War project continues.