PRIVATE JAMES AULINNE GRAY
ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS
9TH AUGUST 1917 AGE 17
BURIED: BRANDHOEK NEW MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
James Gray was 17 when he died of wounds in August 1917. He had been serving in France since October 1915. It's possible that by then he was 15, but he was certainly only 14 when he enlisted since his parents say so in the War Graves Commission's cemetery register. He served with the 108th Field Ambulance (Ulster Division) and died of wounds on 9 August 1917.
In May 1919 Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Fawcett, with the officers and men of the 108th Field Ambulance, presented a plaque in James' memory to the Ormeau Road Methodist Church, Belfast. The local newspaper reported that the plaque was unveiled by Major SB Boyd Campbell who told the congregation that James was a special favourite with all the members of his unit:
"he could be depended upon on at all times to carry through any work set before him. It was his own desire to take up the dangerous work of a stretcher bearer. He faced every risk and nobly died in discharging his duty".
Gray's inscription comes from the second verse of 'Flower of Youth', an immensely popular poem by the Irish poet, Katharine Tynan, first published in The Spectator on 26 December 1914. Tynan herself believed that she had written better poetry about the war but nothing approached the popularity of this one.
Heaven's thronged with gay and careless faces,
New-waked from dreams of dreadful things.
They walk in green and pleasant places
And by crystal water-springs
Forget the nightmare field of slain,
And the fierce thirst and the strong pain.
The poem attempts to reassure mothers that God has rescued these young boys and now has them in his special care:
Oh, if the sonless mothers weeping,
The widowed girls, could look inside
The country that hath them in keeping
Who went to great war and died,
They would rise and put their mourning off,
Priase God, and say: "He has enough."