LIEUTENANT WILFRED EVELYN LITTLEBOY
ROYAL WARWICKSHIRE REGIMENT
9TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 21
BURIED: HOOGE CRATER CEMETERY, BELGIUM
On their own, extracted from the rest of the poem, these are very bleak lines. Within the context of the rest of the poem the words carry a certain nobility, but not on their own:
Proudly you gathered, rank on rank to war
As who had heard God's message from afar;
All you had hoped for, all you had you gave,
To save mankind - yourselves you scorned to save.
This is verse two of Sir John Arkwright's famous poem 'O Valiant Hearts', which, set to music by Gustav Holst, was for many years a staple of Remembrance Day services. It assures the dead that with their "knightly virtue proved", their memory will be "hallowed in the land you loved", since they too have drunk Christ's "cup of sacrifice".
But Wilfred Littleboy's parents chose none of these comforting lines for their younger son who had left school in December 1914 - two terms early - in order to volunteer. Prevented by a knee injury from getting to the front until July 1917, he lasted three months before he was killed in an attack on Polderhoek Chateau near Gheluvelt.
Littleboy's father, Charles, was a wealthy ship builder in the North East of England. After Wilfred's death, the family gave land in Thornaby-on-Tees for the creation of a public park in their son's memory; set up a bursary fund at Rugby School where he had been educated, and gave money to a church near Polderhoek Chateau where the priest had helped Mrs Littleboy find her son's grave.