SECOND LIEUTENANT FREDERICK JOHN BARTLEY
ESSEX REGIMENT
26TH MARCH 1917 AGE 31
BURIED: GAZA WAR CEMETERY, ISRAEL
This could be a coincidence but I don't think so. The Promised Land has a dual identity, it is both heaven and the physical land that God promised to Abraham, which was to stretch,: "from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates" [Genesis 15:18]. No one can quite decide whether 'the river of Egypt' referred to is the Nile or to the Wadi-el-Arish, but whichever it was Frederick Bartley was in the Promised Land when he was killed in the assault on Mansura Ridge in the First Battle of Gaza on 26 March 1917.
However, Bartley's inscription, 'Marching to the promised land', is a quote from the first verse of the hymn Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow, not a statement of fact, even though factually
Through the night of doubt and sorrow
Onward goes the pilgrim band,
Singing songs of expectation,
Marching to the promised land.
And once he was dead, Bartley was of course, on his way to the promised land of heaven:
Where the one almighty Father
Reigns in love for evermore.
What I find curious is the fact that the first time I come across this inscription,it is on a grave in Palestine. I have not seen it in France or Flanders.
An auctioneer in East Anglia, Bartley was a member of the 1st/5th Battalion Essex Regiment, a Territorial battalion. Posted to Gallipoli in May 1915, the battalion was withdrawn to Egypt in December, spent 1916 defending the Suez Canal before moving to Palestine early in 1917.