SECOND LIEUTENANT JOHN HEWITT SUTTON MOXLY
BEDFORDSHIRE REGIMENT
12TH MARCH 1915 AGE 23
BURIED: RAMPARTS CEMETERY, LILLE GATE, YPRES, BELGIUM
Second Lieutenant Moxly's mother chose his inscription; it's not an uncommon one. However, John Hewitt Sutton Moxley has another epitaph, one that was written by his friend the poet Robert William Sterling:
To J.H.S.M., Killed in Action March 13, 1915.
O Brother, I have sung no dirge for thee:
Nor for all time to come
Can song reveal my grief's infinity:
The menace of thy silence made me dumb.
John Moxley was shot through the heart by a sniper as he lifted the wire on the parapet in preparation for going out to repair a forward section of the trench. The War Graves Commission gives his date of death as March 12 not 13 as in the title. Moxley and Sterling had met at Pembroke College, Oxford. They had enlisted together and had hoped to serve in the same regiment but this didn't happen. Sterling was killed six weeks after his friend.