PRIVATE ERNEST GORDON HANDLEY
ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS
22ND AUGUST 1917 AGE 31
BURIED: MENIN ROAD SOUTH MILITARY CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
"For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; in returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength:"
Isaiah 30:15
As Sonia Batten pointed out in her PhD thesis, 'Memorial Text Narratives in Britain c.1890-1930, Mrs Handley, Private Handley's widow, presented this inscription without either quotation marks or the biblical reference, perhaps because she thought the quotation well enough known for it to be unnecessary. However, without Sonia Batten's comment, it would never have occurred to me that this was a quotation, I thought it was simply a comment on Ernest Handley's demeanour as a Royal Army Medical Corps man working with the 43rd Field Ambulance.
Handley was a 'clothiers manager', married for eight months and with no children when he attested in November 1915. Having passed a First Aid Course, he went overseas in April 1916 to serve with the 43rd Field Ambulance RAMC.
Thanks to a wonderful itinerary compiled by William C Dicks, a clerk with the Unit, we know where the Unit was from its arrival in France to the end of the war, not that this helps us to know what happened to Ernest Handley. However, on 22 August 1917, II Corps took part in a costly, failed follow up to the Battle of Langemarck at Glencorse Wood and, according to the itinerary, this is exactly where the 43rd Field Ambulance was:
18 August 1917 Woodcote House and Menin Road - Battle positions for operations at Glencorse Wood; Dressing Stations at both places.
26 August - withdrawn to rest area.
History of the 43rd Field Ambulance RAM
Compiled by William C Dickson
Edinburgh 1934