RIFLEMAN GERALD OSCAR SMITH
ROYAL IRISH RIFLES
14TH OCTOBER 1918 AGE 25
BURIED: TYNE COT CEMETERY, BELGIUM
'Life is sweet brother.'
'Do you think so?'
'Think so! - There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?'
LAVENGRO 1851
George Borrow (1803-1881)
This part autobiography, part novel received a very cool reception when it was first published. Sales picked up after Borrow's death, encouraged by the opinion of critics like Theodore Watts who wrote in the introduction to the 1893 edition: 'There are passages in Lavengro which are unsurpassed in the prose literature of England'. Smith's inscription comes from one such passage. It's so beautiful I'm surprised I haven't come across it before.
Gerald Smith was a married man with at least two children, sons Roy and Phillip. I only know this from the fact that Phillip, a 22-year-old sergeant serving with 10 Squadron Bomber Command, was killed in action on 6 November 1940, and 29-year-old Roy, a constable serving with the Palestine Police Force, was killed in a bomb explosion on 20 October 1946.