PRIVATE JAMES WALTERS
ROYAL FUSILIERS
7TH JULY 1916 AGE 16
BURIED: OVILLERS MILITARY CEMETERY, SOMME, FRANCE
This inscription is a contraction of the second verse of one of the best known poems of the whole war, 'In Flanders Fields' by John McCrae.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Initially published in 'Punch' in December 1915, the poem achieved immediate popularity. McCrae himself, a doctor with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, died of pneumonia in January 1918, but the poem lives on as an integral part of remembrance services in all parts of the English speaking world.
Strangely however, for all its fame and popularity, the poem is not very popular as a source of headstone inscriptions. Possibly it was too new and people preferred the comfort of the old poets like Tennyson and Browning. And interestingly, it seems as though this wasn't a contemporary inscription but one put up as late as 2003. I can't imagine why this should be.
Private Walters - have you noticed that he was only 16 - serving with the 9th Battalion the Royal Fusiliers, was killed on 7 July 1916 in an attack on Ovillers. Buried in Mash Valley Cemetery his grave was lost in subsequent battles. As a result Walters, and the thirty-four other Fusiliers buried in Mash Valley, have Special Memorial headstones in Ovillers Military Cemetery.
