PRIVATE P SMITH
ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS
27TH JANUARY 1917 AGE 22
BURIED: CAIRO WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY, EGYPT
Private P Smith served with the Royal Army Medical Corps attached to the Highland Mounted Brigade. After service in Gallipoli the brigade was transferred to Egypt where it became part of the Western Frontier Force. Based at Minia, a town 150 km south of Cairo on the banks of the River Nile, its task was to monitor the movement of the Senussi who were being encouraged by the Turks to take up jihad against the British. The heat was tremendous, 43°C
109.4°F, and the men suffered terribly from heatstroke and from the lack of sanitation. Private Smith died from typhus on 27 January 1917.
His inscription quotes a seventeenth-century playwright and poet, James Shirley (1596-1666). Shirley's verse has all but disappeared from view but during the nineteenth century this poem, 'Death the Leveller' was included in Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury'. This best-selling book, familiar in many households, was the source of a large number of inscriptions.
The poem, which bears a resemblance to some of Shakespeare's lines, starts:
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
We will all die whether we be kings or commoners, famous or humble, and "Only the actions of the just (Private Smith's mother added 'and brave') smell sweet, and blossom in their dust".
Smith was originally buried in Minia War Cemetery but in April 1960 his body was exhumed, along with all the others, and reburied in Cairo War Memorial Cemetery.