HE NOTHING COMMON DID
OR MEAN
UPON THAT MEMORABLE SCENE

SECOND LIEUTENANT RALPH ERNEST WHITE

EAST SURREY REGIMENT

1ST JANUARY 1970 AGE 40

BURIED: LIJSSENTHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM


These are the words Andrew Marvell used to describe the actions of King Charles I on the scaffold:

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try.
Nor call'd the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless plight,
But bowed his comely head
Down as upon a bed.

I can't work out who the Mrs E Walton of 13 Gerard Road, Harrow, Middlesex, who chose this inscription, can have been. Ralph White never married so this isn't the name of his remarried widow under her new name. Whoever she was, however, she evidently intended to imply that forty-year-old Second Lieutenant White, who in the 1911 census had been an insurance agent in Gosforth, accepted his destiny with great dignity and without complaint. Forty is quite old to be a Second Lieutenant, had he been promoted from the ranks or perhaps he had only recently been conscripted.