SECOND LIEUTENANT ARTHUR CONWAY YOUNG
ROYAL IRISH FUSILIERS
16TH AUGUST 1917 AGE 26
BURIED: TYNE COT CEMETERY, BELGIUM
This is a very famous epitaph, regularly included in battlefield tour itineraries. It expresses what we now want to hear, but is it what the casualty would have wanted to hear?
Arthur Conway Young was the son of Robert Young, the editor of the Japan Chronicle. Robert was an atheist, a republican and a fierce pacifist. Despite this, all three of his sons joined the war effort: Arthur as an officer in the Royal Irish Fusiliers, Douglas George as a captain in the Royal Flying Corps and Eric Andrew as a corporal despatch rider.
However, it wasn't Arthur's father who chose his inscription. Robert Young died in 1922 and the inscription was signed for by G. Young Esq, Conway House, Brent Garden Village, Finchley. Was this Arthur's brother, Douglas George Young? More likely it was his father's brother, George Young. Conway House was a Utopian co-operative housing scheme, where thirty-three households shared communal facilities, including servants, who were housed separately in Brent Lodge.
We know very little about Arthur Young except from a letter he wrote to his father's sister, Margaret, which was published in Laurence Housman's 'War Letters of Fallen Englishmen'. The letter describes the Battle of Ginchy, which took place on 9 September 1916. Describing his feelings on learning that he was to take part in the attack he writes:
"I will tell you the whole truth and confess that my heart sank within me when I heard the news. I had been over the top once already that week, and knew what it was to see men blown to bits, to see men writhing in pain, to see men running round and round gibbering, raving mad. Can you wonder therefore that I felt a sort of sickening dread of the horrors which I knew we should all have to go through?"
He continues:
"You read no end of twaddle in the papers at home about the spirit in which men go into action. ... It's rubbish like this which makes thousands of people in England think war is a great sport. As a famous Yankee general said, "War is hell," and you have only got to be in the Somme one single day to know it."
And yet, as they joined in the attack, this is what he has to say:
"By this time we were all wildly excited. Our shouts and yells alone must have struck terror into the Huns, who were firing their machine guns down the slope. But there was no wavering in the Irish host. ... The numbing dread had now left me completely. Like the others, I was intoxicated with the glory of it all. I can remember shouting and bawling to the men of my platoon, who were only too eager to go on."
And when it was over, he writes of the aftermath: "Our men were very good to the German wounded. An Irishman's heart melts very soon. In fact, kindness and compassion for the wounded, our own and the enemy's, is about the only decent thing I have seen in war". The letter finishes with Arthur telling his aunt that the great Irish charge at Ginchy "will never be forgotten by those who took part in it, for it is an event we shall remember with pride to the end of our days".
So, what would Arthur Conway Young have thought of his inscription, which now meets with such general approval? Does it represent his views or is he commemorated by someone else's. It's complicated.