CORPORAL HUGH MILFOY GILCHRIST
CANADIAN MACHINE GUN CORPS
8TH AUGUST 1918 AGE 25
BURIED: CAIX BRITISH CEMETERY, SOMME, FRANCE
This is a lovely inscription but an unusual epitaph. Do we think that Hugh Gilchrist loved books and reading? Chosen by Gilchrist's father, the use of the past tense, "was better to me", rather than the present tense as in the actual verse, would suggest that he did.
No one quite knows who wrote the verse but it's thought to be an old song.
O for a booke and a shadie nooke, eyther in-a-doore or out;
With the grene leaves whisp'ring overhede, or the streete cryes all about.
Where I maie reade all at my ease, both of the Newe and Olde;
For a jollie goode book whereon to looke is better to me than golde.
Hugh Gilchrist was born in Edinburgh in 1892 but by the time of his enlistment he and his parents were living in Toronto. He was killed in action on 8 August 1918 when the Canadians recaptured Caix on the first day of the Amiens Offensive, which ended one hundred days later in the Allied victory.