PRIVATE DONALD MORTON BUNTING
ROYAL FUSILIERS
24TH NOVEMBER 1915 AGE 22
BURIED: WOBURN ABBEY CEMETERY, CUINCHY, FRANCE
When the war broke out Donald Morton Bunting was a dental student at Guy's Hospital, London. Educated at Rydal Mount School in Colwyn Bay, he had enlisted in the 21st Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, the 4th University and Public Schools Battalion before the end of August 1914. Many of the recruits, like Bunting, preferred to serve with their friends in the ranks rather than take commissions in other regiments. After training for over a year, the Battalion eventually went to France in November 1915, the last of the battalion arriving on the 21 November. Bunting was killed three days later on the 24th.
His inscription comes from the last lines of 'O May I Join the Choir Invisible', the best known and best regarded poem by the novelist George Eliot (1819-1880) in which she articulates her extremely unconventional Christian vision of the afterlife. To Eliot, the only afterlife is that which comes to those whose reputations live on because of the contribution they made to the betterment of the world.
O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence:
Bunting's father chose the inscription. I wonder how it went down with Donald's grandfather a Wesleyan Methodist Minister with whom he had been living whilst studying dentistry.