SECOND LIEUTENANT WALTER MORSE JOTCHAM
WORCESTERSHIRE REGIMENT
19TH AUGUST 1917 AGE 28
BURIED: NEW IRISH FARM CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
There are five Jotchams on the Wotton-under-Edge war memorial, Walter, his brother Cyril, and three of his cousins: Herbert, William and Fred. Walter and Cyril share a marble memorial plaque in St Mary's Church recording the dates of their deaths and concluding with the same quotation as that on Walter's headstone:
"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."
The quotation comes from the Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy in which Paul, acknowledging that "the time of my departure is at hand", his martyrdom, looks forward to the "crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day". It's the same crown of righteousness that will be awarded to all those who have endured suffering and faced death for Christ's sake - just as, in their parents' opinion, Walter and Cyril Jotcham had done.
The brothers are also commemorated in volume 5 of the Marquis de Ruvigny's Roll of Honour, which records that Walter went to America in June 1914 and settled in Washington State as a fruit farmer. However, soon after the outbreak of war he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and returned to Europe. He saw action on the Western Front from August 1915 until July 1916 when he returned to England to take up a commission in the Worcestershire Regiment. Back in France in March 1917, he was killed on the night of the 18/19 August leading his platoon across the Steenbeek in the face of fierce German fire.
Cyril Jotcham joined the Gloucestershire Yeomanry in January 1915 and served with them in Egypt and Gallipoli, from where he was invalided home with dysentery. He returned in May 1916 to serve with them in Palestine and died there of malaria on 16 August 1918. His headstone inscription comes from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress:
And he passed over
And all the trumpets sounded
For him on the other side