SECOND LIEUTENANT FAIRLIE RUSSELL MARTIN
ROYAL FLYING CORPS
29TH JUNE 1917 AGE 19
BURIED: NEW IRISH FARM CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
Martin - Killed in action on the 29th June 1917, 2nd Lieutenant Fairlie Russell Martin, Royal Scots Fusiliers, attached Royal Flying Corps, only child of Fleet Paymaster W.E.R. Martin, C.M.G., and Mrs Martin, aged 19 years and two months.
The Times Friday 6 July 1917
"Nineteen years and two months", Fairlie Russell Martin was indeed just "a boy", who "spent his boy's dear life for England". The words come from a poem by John Drinkwater called 'Riddles, R.F.C.' (1916), which was dedicated to Stewart Gordon Ridley who died on 18 June 1916 when he too was only 19. The poem first appeared in the Saturday Review on 5 August that year and was later included in 'Olton Pools'.
He was a boy of April beauty; one
Who had not tried the world; who; while the sun
Flamed yet upon the eastern sky, was done.
Time would have brought him in her patient ways -
So his young beauty spoke - to prosperous days,
To fullness of authority and praise.
He would not wait so long. A boy, he spent
His boy's dear life for England. Be content:
No honour of age had been more excellent.
Born in April 1898, educated at Bedford Grammar School and Sandhurst, Martin was commissioned into the Royal Scots Fusiliers in April 1916 and served with them on the Western Front from July 1916 until early 1917 when he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps.
On 3 June 1917 he joined 57 Squadron, a long distance bombing and photo reconnaissance squadron flying DH4s. Twenty-six days later, on the 29 June, he was "killed in action whilst flying".
"Be content", is this a reference to Simonides epitaph for the dead of Thermopylae, which was the basis of the famous epitaph on the memorial to the dead of the Battle of Wagon Hill during the Boer War?
Tell England, ye who pass this monument
We, who died serving her, rest here content.
"Be content" ... the inscription, loaded with affection and sorrow, was signed for by Martin's father, Rear Admiral William Ernest Russell Martin, who served throughout the First World War and then became an enthusiastic supporter of the British Fascist movement.
[I wrote in some detail about Simonides quotation and its subsequent variations for Epitaph 181.]