SECOND LIEUTENANT HAROLD HARDING LINZELL MC
BORDER REGIMENT
3RD JULY 1916 AGE 21
BURIED: DANZIG ALLEY BRITISH CEMETERY, MAMETZ, FRANCE
This inscription heads Chapter 4 of 'The Quick and the Dead, Fallen Soldiers and their Families in the Great War by Richard van Emden. We can read it as Harold Linzell's mother railing against God for her son's death, and desperately pleading that it shouldn't be in vain. But is this what she meant?
There's a hymn by the Scottish hymn writer Horatius Bonar of which these are the first two verses:
Go, labour on! spend and be spent,
Thy joy to do the Father's will:
It is the way the master went;
Should not the servant tread it still?
Go labour on! 'tis not for naught
Thine earthly loss is heavenly gain;
Men heed thee, love thee, praise thee not;
The master praises: what are men?
It is your joy to do God's bidding, why should you not tread the difficult way God's son trod, what does it matter what men say because God will reward you in the end: "Soon thou shall hear the Bridegroom's voice, The midnight peal, "Behold I come!"
Harold Linzell enlisted in September 1914 and served as a private until September 1915 when he was commissioned into The Border Regiment. That December he was awarded a Military Cross, the citation reading:
"For conspicuous gallantry. After a heavy bombardment the enemy exploded a mine and Second Lieutenant Linzell showed great courage and ability throughout the night in leading and directing the working and wiring parties, who put the crater in a state of defence. Although bombed frequently by the enemy, he succeeded in carrying out the work before daylight."
Linzell kept a diary from 1 January to 30 June 1916. This was edited by MA Argyle and published in 1981 as Fallen on the Somme: the war diary of Second Lieutenant HH Linzell. According to a review in Great War Forum, the diary looks as though it was a series of aide memoires for future reference. The fact that it survived its owner, who was killed in an attack at Fricourt, is attributed to the note inside the front cover:
"In the event of the owner losing this diary or of being "whizz banged, crumped, bombed, bayonetted or sniped" with fatal results to the said person, please forward (risking 'Base Censor') to Mrs FL Linzell, Corner House, The Grove, Finchley, London.
Mrs FL Linzell was his mother although the War Graves Commission records that twenty-one-year old Harold Linzell had a wife, Mrs Eva Linzell.