CAPTAIN ANDREW GEORGE CHRISTIAN
AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
1ST MAY 1915 AGE 42
BURIED: SHRAPNEL VALLEY CEMETERY, GALLIPOLI, TURKEY
This inscription, chosen by Captain Christian's wife, comes from a poem written at the time of the Boer War by William Alexander, the Protestant Primate of All Ireland. It's a long poem from which these are the relevant verses:
They who marched up the bluffs last stormy week,
Some of them, ere they reached the mountain's creek,
The wind of battle breathing on their cheek,
Suddenly laid them down.
Like sleepers - not like those whose race is run -
Fast, fast asleep amid the cannon's roar,
Them no reveille and no morning gun
Shall ever waken more.
The morning gun was fired at the same time as the first bugle note of reveille and summoned the soldier from sleep.