PRIVATE STANLEY EDGAR STEPHEN RAVELL
AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
29TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 28
BURIED: LIJSSENTHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
Sidney Ravell was a labourer from Coogee, NSW. He enlisted in Holsworthy, now a suburb of Sydney, embarked for Europe on 20 December 1915 and died of wounds in hospital in Lijssenthoek on 29 October 1917.
His mother confirmed his inscription, which comes from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
But these are deeds which should not pass away,
And names that must not wither, though the earth
Forgets her empires with a just decay,,
The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth;
The high, the mountain-majesty of worth
Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,
And from its immortality look forth
In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow,
Imperishably pure beyond all things below.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Canto the Third LXVII
Lord Byron
Sidney Ravell's foster-brother, Michael Noble Smith was killed in action on 19 July 1916. He is buried in Ration Farm Military Cemetery, La Chapelle-D'Armentieres and his headstone carries the same personal inscription as Sidney Ravell's.