LANCE CORPORAL RALPH OSBORNE KEMPTON
CANADIAN INFANTRY
15TH AUGUST 1917 AGE 25
BURIED: LIEVIN COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION, FRANCE
There is something very striking about this inscription, especially when compared with the entries in the 87th Battalion Canadian Infantry War Diary. Kempton was killed on the first day of their assault on Hill 70. Pages 13 to 22 in the August 1917 diary (see above link) give an immediate and highly detailed report on the operation from the runners as they brought the information in. It is just amazing to read of the savagery expected of these men and of their completely understandable, in the situation, pleasure at killing the enemy. Calm endurance it isn't, endurance it certainly is.
And yet I like the inscription, evoking as it does an image of all those hundreds and thousands of men who gave up their civilian lives to live in fear and danger and in spartan conditions in order to do their duty towards their country. It reminds me of the words on the next-of-kin memorial scroll dedicated to those who:
left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self sacrifice.
The inscription comes from 'Hyperion', a novel by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published in 1839. The novel wasn't particularly well known but the quotation was and it regularly appeared in anthologies and quotation collections:
Welcome Disappointment! Thy hand is cold and hard, but it is the hand of a friend! Thy voice is stern and harsh, but it is the voice of a friend! O, there is something sublime in calm endurance, something sublime in the resolute, fixed purpose of suffering without complaining, which makes disappointment oftentimes better than success.
Ralph Kempton was born in Watford, England on 3 September 1891. Judging from the memorials to him in his home town, he attended Watford Grammar School and Beechen Grove Baptist Church. In the 1911 census he was 19 and working as an insurance clerk. On 3 January 1914 he set sail for Canada. At some point he enlisted and returned to Europe to fight. His mother chose his inscription, his father having died in 1904.
