PRIVATE JAMES OLIVER
CANADIAN INFANTRY
9TH APRIL 1917 AGE 19
BURIED: BOIS-CARRE BRITISH CEMETERY, THELUS, FRANCE
'Lord keep my memory green' is the last line of Charles Dickens' book The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, 1848. It was accompanied by an illustration by C.Stansfield RA showing a grand Gothic room with adults sitting round a festive table and young children playing on the floor.
The ghost's bargain is that he can help Professor Redlaw, the haunted man of the title, "to forget the sorrow, wrong and trouble you have known ... to cancel their remembrance ... forever". But, this gift of forgetfulness will be given to everyone he comes into contact with too. Redlaw accepts the bargain but finds that he becomes inexplicably more angry, unkind and bitter. Eventually it is pointed out to him that, "It is important to remember past sorrows and wrongs so that you can then forgive those responsible and, in so doing, unburden your soul ...". In accepting this, Redlaw realises that memory is a vital ingredient for love and understanding to flourish.
There is a terrible poignancy to James Oliver's inscription. It was chosen by his mother, Mrs Sophia Oliver of Trail, British Columbia. Two of her sons, James and William, were killed in the war and her husband, Sidney, was killed on the same day and in the same battle as William - 24 April 1915 at St Julien. William and Sidney have no known grave and are commemorated on the Menin Gate in Ypres, so James is the only one for whom she could choose an inscription.
Sidney Oliver was a forty-nine-year-old miner from Trail, British Colombia. Born in England, in Hartington, Derbyshire, he emigrated to Canada as a young man where he married. He enlisted on 18 September 1914, ticking the box to say that he had had previous military experience and claiming that he had been born in 1870 and was therefore 44. In fact he was nearer 49 as he was 50 when he was killed the following year.
'Keep my memory green'. Not don't forget me, nor even don't let me forget them, but let me remember everything and let me see it clearly.
