ACTING BOMBARDIER THOMAS MOUNTFORD
ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY
31ST JULY 1917 AGE 23
BURIED: BRANDHOEK NEW MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
Thomas Mountford's inscription is a slightly altered version of some famous lines from John Ruskin's 'Proserpina'. Ruskin claimes that the impact of a 'real' human life on the world is not at all slight or insubstantial:
"That life, when it is real, is not evanescent; is not slight; does not vanish away. Every noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven for ever in the work of the world; by so much, evermore, the strength of the human race has gained; more stubborn in the root, higher towards heaven in the branch; and, "as a teil tree, as an oak, - whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, - so the holy seed is in the midst thereof".
Mountford, the son of a hewer in a coal miner, was a trainee teacher in the 1911 census. He served with C Battery 232nd Army Field Brigade Royal Artillery and died of wounds on 31 July 1917, the opening day of the Third Ypres Campaign. His mother chose his inscription, asserting that her son's life had made a positive contribution to the 'work of the world'.