SECOND LIEUTENANT RICHARD DOUGLAS MILES, MC
ROYAL IRISH FUSILIERS
17TH AUGUST 1917 AGE 27
BURIED: BRANDHOEK NEW MILITARY CEMETERY NO. 3, BELGIUM
This inscription, with its sporting analogies, comes from the last lines of 'The Fool', a poem by the Anglo-Canadian author Robert William Service. The fool of the poem is a young boy, Dick, who insists on giving up his schooling in order to join the army. The poet's voice is that of a parent:
"Rubbish!" I cried; "the bugle's call
Isn't for lads from school."
D'ye think he'd listen? Oh, not at all:
So I called him a fool, a fool.
Dick, of course is killed:
Dick with his rapture of song and sun,
Dick of the yellow hair,
Dicky whose life had just begun,
Carrion-cold out there,
The parent realises his huge mistake:
And I called him a fool ... oh how blind was I!
And the cup of my grief's abrim.
Will glory of England ever die
So long as we've lads like him?
Before concluding with the only comfort he can find:
Thank God! we know that he "Batted well"
In the last great Game of all.
Richard Douglas Miles, born in Jamaica where his father was the Collector General, was educated at Bedford Grammar School and destined for the army but decided to go to Canada instead where he first worked on a farm before joining a bank. Soon after the outbreak of war, he enlisted in the Alberta Regiment and went to Europe with the Second Canadian Contingent. He rose rapidly through the ranks to become Company Sergeant Major before being commissioned into the Royal Irish Fusiliers early in 1916.
On 16 August 1917 the 9th Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers attacked on the opening day of the Battle of Langemarck. According to Nick Metcalfe in 'Blacker's Boys', the action virtually destroyed the battalion, which was amalgamated with the 2nd Irish Horse the following month. Miles was wounded and died at the Casualty Clearing Station in Brandhoek early the next day.