SECOND LIEUTENANT DAVID PRITCHARD
ROYAL WELSH FUSILIERS
19TH MARCH 1916 AGE 19
BURIED: POINT 110 NEW MILITARY CEMETERY, FRICOURT, FRANCE
'Whom the gods love dies young' (Menander), 'He whom the gods love dies young (Hypsaeus), 'He whom the gods love dies young, while he has his strength and senses and wits (Plautus). Byron echoed the ancient authors when he wrote:
"Whom the gods love die young," was said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends, and that which slays even more,
The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is,
Except mere breath.
Don Juan (Canto iv st. 12)
The same sentiment lay behind the passage in Horace Vachell's 'The Hill' when the Headmaster told the assembled school that one of their number had just been killed in the South African War:
"I would sooner see any of you struck down in the flower of youth than living on to lose, long before death comes, all that makes life worth living. Better death a thousand times, than gradual decay of mind and spirit; better death than faithlessness, indifference and uncleaness."
I'm not suggesting for a moment that these were Dr Joseph Pritchard's sentiments when he chose his son's inscription. The phrase had come to mean that the dead person was beloved of the gods rather than that it was better to be dead, beloved of the gods because he was beautiful, graceful, accomplished, happy ...
David Pritchard's life and death is excellently covered on Bradford Grammar School's memorial site. Pritchard served with the 1st Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, along with Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. He was killed by a high explosive shell on the same night as Sassoon's friend, David Thomas. Thomas, Pritchard and another officer, all killed on the same night, were buried the following night with Graves and Sassoon both present.
Many people wrote many complimentary things about young David Pritchard, all lending credence to the idea that he was beloved of the gods, but it was what his father wrote of his son that is the most touching: "David was just an ordinary boy. He was afraid of the dark. He disliked to get hurt ... you will see what an ordinary boy can do if he sets himself to do it, and what one ordinary boy can do any ordinary boy can do".