PRIVATE WALTER STERICKER WILKINSON
ARMY SERVICE CORPS
1ST JANUARY 1917 AGE 31
BURIED: HEILLY STATION CEMETERY, MERICOURT-L'ABBE, FRANCE
Mrs Ethel Wilkinson chose this inscription for her husband. It comes from the last verse of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, The Musician's Tale; the Saga of King Olaf. Mrs Wilkinson uses the lines to imply the permanence of her love, and her belief that the time is not far off before she and her husband will be reunited. Longfellow is asserting the permanence of God's love:
"The dawn is not distant,
Nor is the night starless;
Love is eternal!
God is still God, and
His faith shall not fail us;
Christ is eternal!"
Walter Wilkinson died on 1 January 1917, three days after his only child's third birthday. The inscription on his parents' headstone in Kirkheaton Lane Side Cemetery, Huddersfield, Yorkshire refers to the fact that Walter was "accidentally killed". In 2014 the Huddersfield Daily Examiner interviewed Walter's grandson. He told them that Walter had been suffocated when a newly dug trench collapsed.