SECOND LIEUTENANT EDMUND JASPER SHALLCROSS CAVE
ROYAL AIR FORCE
18TH AUGUST 1915 AGE 23
BURIED: HEATH CEMETERY, HARBONNIERES, FRANCE
Second Lieutenant Edmund Cave's full inscription reads:
One moment stood he
As the angels stand
High in the immanence of air
The next - he was not
To the fatherland
Departed unaware
The inscription has 120 characters, including spaces, almost double the permitted number, which was 66. This means that Twitter couldn't carry it in full with its blog link, which is why I have written it out in full. The words come from the second verse of Frederic Myers' poem, On a Grave at Grindelwald, although the words of the inscription are not exactly the same as those of the poem - nor is the spelling of the word eminence.
Grindelwald, a village in the Swiss Alps, is the base for climbers wishing to climb the north face of the Eiger. The poem, which describes a climber's death, transfers rather well to that of an airman.
Here let us leave him; for his shroud the snow,
For funeral lamps he has the planets seven,
For a great sign the icy stair shall go
Between the heights to heaven.
One moment stood he as the angels stand,
High in the stainless eminence of air;
The next, he was not, to his fatherland
Translated unaware.
Edmund Cave was shot down whilst on a line patrol near Vignacourt, spotting and attacking tanks. Born in London where his father, also Edmund Cave, was a solicitor in Hatton Garden, Edmund Cave junior had gone to Canada for health reasons and at the time of the outbreak of war was managing a fruit ranch in British Columbia. He enlisted in the Canadian Infantry but on arrival in Britain transferred to the Royal Air Force. His uncle, Sir George Cave, was Conservative Home Secretary 1916-1919 in Lloyd George's cabinet. This might explain why Edmund Cave's parents felt they could disobey the restrictions of length of inscription. However, the evidence seems to show that providing you were prepared to pay the War Graves Commission were prepared to allow their ruling to be broken, whoever you were.