PRIVATE ARTHUR JAMES HOLMAN
LONDON REGIMENT
13TH MARCH 1918 AGE 21
BURIED: CAIRO WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY, EGYPT
In the 1911 census, fourteen-year-old Arthur Holman from Bethnal Green in London was learning the confectionary trade. Eight years later he died of dysentery in hospital in Cairo whilst serving with the 1st/10th Battalion London Regiment. His widowed mother chose his inscription; it references the gates of heaven through which the righteous shall pass into eternal life:
I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.
The Lord hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death.
Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord:
This gate of the Lord, into which the righteous shall enter.
Psalm 118 v 17-20
It is a thought that comforts Mrs Holman because these are the gates that few find:
Enter ye at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
St. Matthew 7:13-14