SECOND LIEUTENANT NORMAN EDWIN RUTHERFORD
KING'S OWN ROYAL LANCASTER REGIMENT
21ST JULY 1916 AGE 21
BURIED: HEILLY STATION CEMETERY, MERICOURT-L'ABBE, FRANCE
In June 1917 King George V instituted a new Order, that of the Companions of Honour. It was to be "conferred upon a limited number of persons for whom this special distinction seems to be the most appropriate form of recognition ...". Companions were awarded an elaborate oval medallion and, inscribed around its blue border were the words: "In action faithful and in honour clear".
The words did not originate here, they were a quote from a poem by Alexander Pope: 'Verses Occasioned by Mr Addison's Treatise on Medals". Although written in 1715, the poem was not published until 1720 when the last few lines were added having been written by Pope for the tomb of his friend James Craggs in Westminster Abbey:
Statesman, yet friend to truth; of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear;
Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end,
Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend;
Ennobled by himself, by all approved,
Prais'd, wept and honour'd by the Muse* he lov'd.
[* The muse was Alexander Pope]
I would suggest that it was the wording on the medallion that inspired James Rutherford's choice for his son's headstone inscription rather than Pope's poem, but I thoroughly approve of what I assume must have been his reasoning. Although the award is now given for major contributions to the arts, science, medicine or government, the first awards were all for services to the war and who better, in his father's opinion, to be given this accolade than a young man who had given his life.
Norman Edwin Rutherford served with the 7th Battalion the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, which was raised in Lancaster in September 1914. The battalion arrived in France in July 1915 and served there, taking part in all the major engagements, until it was disbanded in February 1918. It fought on the Somme, attacking at La Boiselle on 6 July 1916 and at Bazentin le Petit on the 23rd. But by then Rutherford was dead. He died of wounds on 21 July at a Casualty Clearing Station in Mericourt-l'-Abbe and was buried there.