GUNNER ERNEST LORD
ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY
29TH APRIL 1918 AGE 42
BURIED: BELGIAN BATTERY CORNER, BELGIUM
This epitaph solves one thing - it proves conclusively that the War Graves Commission did not count punctuation marks as characters - unlike Twitter. A scribbled figure beside this inscription notes that it has 70 characters, which there are only if you don't count the brackets, the apostrophe and the quotation marks. That's still four more than the War Grave Commission's 66 character limit, but as this project has already noted, some inscriptions are much longer than 66.
According to his wife, Ernest Lord was one of nature's gentleman, see epitaph 217, a phrase describing a man who had all the qualities of a gentleman without being born to his station in life.
It's very interesting that she is so specific about his religion - Baptist and Theosophist - not a combination that either church could have been happy with.
Theosophy's three main objectives were:
1. to promote the brotherhood of man without distinction of race, colour, religion or social position.
2. to select universal world ethics from a study and comparison of ancient world religions.
3. to study and develop the latent divine powers in man.
Theosophy received a boost from the First World War, for some because of its interest in the brotherhood of man but for others their interest lay in the study and development of "the latent divine powers of man", which often meant spiritualism, communication with the dead usually through a spirit medium.
Gunner Ernest Lord was killed in action on 29 April 1918