LIEUTENANT COLONEL ROBERT GARTSIDE
AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
8TH MAY 1915 AGE 52
BURIED: REDOUBT CEMETERY, GALLIPOLI, TURKEY
Fifty-two-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Gartside was mortally wounded as he rose to lead an attack on the Turkish trenches during the Second Battle of Krithia. He is quoted as having just said, "Come on boys, I know it's deadly, but we must get on," when he was hit in the abdomen by machine gun bullets.
His inscription sounds as though it must be a quotation. It could be a reference to the hymn 'Once to Every Man and Nation'. The hymn's sentiment would have been seen to be appropriate:
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Offering each the bloom or blight;
And the choice goes by for ever
'Twixt that darkness and that light.
With the last verse concluding:
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.
This looked to me as though it was the closest we were going to get to the source of the epitaph. However, I put the phrase into Google in inverted commas and came up with a photograph taken by E.R.Pretyman, 1870-1930, held in the Archives Office of Tasmania, which shows a large mausoleum with the words 'Light evermore, behind all shadows standeth God' written in huge letters across the pediment. Could this be the source of the inscription and if so is there any connection between Robert Gartside and this mausoleum, which unfortunately isn't identified?