LADDIE IN KHAKI
WE ARE THINKING OF YOU
DAD, MUM AND LITTLE NORA

SERJEANT HENRY LEWIS BURT

TANK CORPS

24TH AUGUST 1917 AGE 20

BURIED: LIJSSENTHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM


Many, many families pledge in their headstone inscriptions that they will never forget the dead soldier, this use of the present continuous makes the statement more active, 'we are thinking of you' rather than the usual, 'You will never be forgotten'. Was 'Laddie' his parents' diminutive for their son? 'Little Nora' was his four-year-old sister.
In the 1911 census it appears that Henry Burt was the servant and hairdressing assistant of a Dutch tobacconist and hairdresser in Hornsey - where he had been born and brought up. He enlisted in October 1914 and went to France in April 1915 with the Machine Gun Corps. Invalided home in December 1915, he transferred to the Tank Corps and returned to Belgium in May 1917.
Burt served with 18th Company, F Battalion who were engaged in a combined tank, artillery and infantry action along the St Julien-Poelkappelle Road during 20-22 August. Burt was wounded on the 22nd and died two days later.