PRIVATE W DICKINSON
ROYAL WELSH FUSILIERS
24TH AUGUST 1918 AGE 19
BURIED: DAOURS COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION, FRANCE
Private Dickinson's inscription is based on the poem 'Stanzas to the Memory of the Spanish Patriots latest killed in resisting the Regency and the Duke of Angouleme by Thomas Campbell 1777-1844. Campbell's poem actually says that, "The patriot's blood's the seed of Freedom's tree", but the way the Dickinson parents have phrased it is how the quotation is usually known. Campbell's poem, written during the Napoleonic Wars, articulates many concepts that would have been familiar to those who fought in the First World War: "There is a victory in dying well for Freedom, - and ye have not died in vain"; "And looking on your graves, though trophied not, as holier hallowed ground than priests could make the spot"; "Glory to them that die in this great cause".
Private Dickinson was killed in an early morning attack towards La Boiselle-Grandcourt, the 14th Battalion's War Diary gives the details, with the second page of the diary here. The attack appears to have been successful, and many German prisoners were taken, but Private Dickinson was among eight soldiers from the Battalion to be killed that day.