LANCE CORPORAL PERCY CLEMENT MARCH
EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT
20TH MAY 1918 AGE 19
BURIED: ETAPLES MILITARY CEMETERY, FRANCE
Lance Corporal Percy Clement March was in hospital in Etaples suffering from influenza when he was killed in a German air raid. On the night of the 19-20 May 1918, fifteen German bombers came over in two waves between 10.30pm and 1am, dropping 116 bombs and causing multiple casualties in the collapsed and burning buildings.
March had been a serving soldier since arriving in Egypt in December 1915; born in 1899, this would have made him 16. His medal index card records that he served in the 3rd Battalion Hampshire Regiment and the Royal Sussex Regiment before he became a member of the East Yorkshire Regiment. This suggests to me that he was wounded twice.
March's father, Clement Harry March, chose this inscription for his eldest child, possibly attempting to match the effect of his son's death on the family with the cause for which he died. Father lived long enough to know that Percy's death did not "save mankind from destruction"; he died in 1963 aged 91.