PRIVATE SIDNEY JOHN CANNELL
GRENADIER GUARDS
2ND NOVEMBER 1914 AGE 28
BURIED: YPRES TOWN CEMETERY EXTENSION, BELGIUM
This is a difficult inscription to gauge. At first sight it looks like a bitter criticism of Private Cannell's pointless death, but perhaps that is to be reading it with our twenty-first-century preconceptions. Sidney Cannell was wounded on 1 November in the desperate fighting around Ypres as the Germans pushed again and again to break the British lines. His wife chose his inscription. I wonder if she was simply acknowledging that something she held very dear had had to be given up for the greater good, which is the meaning of sacrifice, rather than that her husband was the victim of a callous military command.