Epitaphs of the Great War

AUSTRALIA AND THE WAR

HE DIED FOR JUSTICE
AND FOR FREEDOM'S SAKE
FOR EMPIRE , KING AND RIGHT

LIEUTENANT RICHARD ROLAND RANNARD

"I state that Lieut Rannard was killed by a shell - wounded in the neck and died at once at Sec-Bois on April 17th 1918. He was buried there, with other members of Battalion by a Padre and a cross, a very nice one, was erected. He was a fine little chap.The ground was held.
Eye-witness: -No
Description:- Dark, thin face, grey eyes, medium height.
Home address:-
Informant: Byrne. GB. Lieut. (Entirely reliable)
2nd AIF
3rd London General Hospital
Wandsworth"

Lieutenant Bytne may not have been an eyewitness but there were plenty in this Red Cross Wounded and Missing file and unusually they all agree. Rannard was giving orders whilst a barrage was on, "I saw him killed by a piece of shrapnel, back of neck, instantly fell back dead in my arms".
Rannard's inscription is very much influenced by propaganda: recruiting posters such as - "Take up the Sword of Justice" - and the memorial plaque given to the next-of-kin of all the dead which states that whoever received it had died for 'freedom and honour', together with numerous pleas in posters and the press for Australians to fight for their King and the Empire.
Richard Rannard was born in Australia and enlisted as a private in September 1915. He was commissioned Second Lieutenant in December 1916 and promoted Lieutenant on May 1917. The son of William and Margaret Rannard of Maylands, Western Australia, it was his wife Edith, who chose his inscription.

HE DIED FOR ENGLAND

PRIVATE RALPH OSBORNE HARWOOD

As the centenary draws to an end, I thought it would be interesting to see what some next-of-kin gave as the cause for which they believed their family members had died. Yesterday's casualty, Thomas Scott Brodie, gave his life for the Empire.
Ralph Harwood, who served with the 3rd Battalion Australian Infantry and was killed in action in Gallipoli on 30 November 1915, 'died for England'. The son of Ralph Harwood and his wife Mary Frances Buckley, Ralph jnr was born in Liverpool, England and emigrated with his parents to Australia in 1898 when he was two. He enlisted in May 1915 when he was 18 and 9 months and embarked for Egypt two months later. He was killed a month before the Allied forces were withdrawn from the peninsula.
His mother chose his inscription and filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia. In this she wrote that "He was grandson of Major TNJ Buckley VC, RE (Indian Mutiny). Major Buckley obtained this for the blowing up of the magazine at Delhi,"
Ralph Harwood WAS the grandson of Thomas Newton John Buckley, and Major John Buckley WAS awarded a VC for his actions in blowing up the Delhi magazine and so saving it from falling into the hands of the rebels, but they weren't the same person.
One of the tragic aspects of John Buckley VC's life is that although he was married three times and fathered eight children, two of his wives died and all eight of his children, some from disease and some killed during the rebellion. Thomas Newton John Buckley also served in the Royal Engineers but it looks very much from this forum as though he was a deserter.
The things you find out.

SAME MESSAGE

LIEUTENANT GUY KENNEDY DAVENPORT MC

Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday 14 April 1917
"A private cable message was yesterday received by Mr Frank A Davenport, stating that his youngest son, Lieut. Guy Kennedy Davenport, of the Australian Field Artillery, was killed in action in France on the 10th inst. The deceased officer, who was a member of the firm of Frank A Davenport and Son, was educated at King's College, Goulburn, and was 26 years of age. He was recently awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous bravery. Lieut. Davenport has left a widow - the daughter of Mr WR Cowper, manager of the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney at West Maitland."

"7 April 1920
Dear Madam,
I am returning herewith circular (form "A") in respect re your husband, the late Lieutenant GK Davenport, MC, 4th Field Artillery Brigade, in order that the personal inscription you desire may be inserted thereon. It is noted that you have stated "same message". Evidently you sent another form at the same time, but as each one is separately dealt with it is necessary that the inscription be shown on each form.
Yours faithfully
Officer i/c Base Records"

"Sydney
April 16th
Dear Sir,
In reply to your letter of April 7th I have never sent or filled in any form to you except the one enclosed - the words I wish put on my husband's headstone are "Same message" - simply and only [underlined] those two words - I understand we can have what we wish as long as we pay the cost of the engraving. I do not want any mistake about this, all I wish are those two words [last three words all underlined]. Would you please let me know if it is clearly understood ...
Your truly
Mabel Davenport"

"14 May 1920
Dear Madam,
I have to acknowledge receipt of your letter of 16th April, which has been forwarded to this office by the Secretary, Department of Defence, and note you desire simply the two words "Same message" to appear as the personal inscription on the permanent memorial over the grave of your husband, the late Lieutenant GK Davenport MC ..."
Yours faithfully
Officer i/c Base Records"

I wonder what the same message was - 'I will always love you' perhaps?

NO LIFE IS LOST
THAT'S NOBLY SPENT
NO HERO'S DEATH IS PREMATURE
MOTHER

LIEUTENANT WILFRED VIVIAN HUBERT LUTHER BIDSTRUP

Wilfred Bidstrup, an accountant from South Australia, was killed in action on 3 April 1917 leading a group of bombers in a night attack on the German trenches. Witness reports vary wildly but the fact of his death was never disputed.

He was killed "by a Boche machine gun while advancing to the attack. His platoon met a German strong-point and had a bad time".

"I saw casualty killed at Noreuil, France by a machine-gun bullet whilst on a bombing raid. He was killed under my eyes, not instantly but he died of wounds shortly afterwards."

"He was found by a search party, sent out to look for him, dead, riddled with bullets and his revolver empty".

"I found his body next day, with his revolver lying by his side. All the cartridges had been fired off. I could see no marks of a wound on his body, so he must have been killed by a bullet."

Bidstrup's mother, Minna, chose his inscription from a poem called 'To S.H. Killed in France (From his First Schoolmaster)" by W. Snow which was published in The Spectator on 15 May 1915. This is the first verse:

You, killed in action, leading men!
I hardly yet believe it true:
For me you're still the boy of ten,
Blue-eyes and curly-haired, I knew.

The poem recounts the triumphs of his schooldays, of his year at Oxford before he volunteered, forsaking the 'magic' gown' for duty. This is the last verse:

And is this all? was all in vain
The life that you so early gave?
No life is short that's nobly spent,
No hero's death is premature.

The inscription, particularly the penultimate line of the poem, is much better known than the rest of the poem and is quite regularly found on war graves.

DUTY CALLED HIM, HE OBEYED
HE HAD NO WISH TO ROAM
HE LOVED THE LAND HE LIVED IN
AND HIS DEAR ONES AT HOME

CAPTAIN HUGH CORNELIUS BUCKLEY

Hugh Buckley was an Australian born and bred, this was the country he loved. His wife, the mother of his two daughters, chose his inscription; these were his dear ones at home.
Buckley, who had been a member of the militia for eleven years, joined up in March 1915. He was soon promoted captain and adjutant of the 22nd Battalion, which left for Gallipoli on the 8 May. He was wounded nineteen days later. Hospitalised first in Malta and then in England, he didn't return to France until April 1916.
Having recently attended a grenade-handling course, Buckley was giving a course of instruction himself when a grenade exploded in his hand - he was killed instantly. A witness related what happened:

"He [Buckley] was at the bomb school giving instructions how to use a certain bomb, and this particular one if you hit it with your hand will go off, and poor old Buck said to them, don't hit it like this and he brings his hand down on it and hit the detonator, it exploded and killed three of them."

UNG LOY-UNG FOY-UNG ROY

MAJOR MILES CHARLES CARISTON SETON

Well I certainly didn't expect this when I looked up this curious inscription. Mind you, it wouldn't be quite so curious if it wasn't set out like this, this is probably how it was meant to be: 'Ung loy - ung foy - ung roy'. But it would have been even clearer without the dashes. It's the Seton family motto and it's in Old French and means, 'One law, one faith, one king'.
However, that's not what I didn't expect. Major Seton died on 13 January 1919. I assumed it would be from wounds or influenza but it wasn't. Seton was murdered by a fellow officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Cecil Rutherford, as The Times reported on 15 January:

"Late on Monday night Major Miles Charles Cariston Seton, CB, Australian Army Medical Corps, was shot dead in the drawing room of the house of his cousin, Sir Malcolm Cotter Cariston Seton, CB, in Clarendon Road, Holland Park, W. Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Cecil Rutherford, DSO, RAMC, (TF), was charged at the West London Police Court yesterday morning with causing his death."

The murder caused a sensation and events were closely followed in the press. Rutherford, who had shot Seton eight times, made no attempt to escape and waited patiently for the police to arrive at which point he was arrested. Two weeks later an inquest concluded that he should be sent for trial on a charge of murder.
Rutherford came to trial in April and pleaded 'not guilty'. The jury heard that Seton had become very familiar with Mrs Rutherford and her children, and that Mrs Rutherford wanted a divorce. Throughout the trial her reputation was constantly protected, the story being that Rutherford believed that Seton was turning his children against him. Rutherford was found not guilty but insane and was sentenced to be detained at His Majesty's pleasure in Broadmoor.
Undoubtedly Rutherford's war record, both his DSO and the fact that he had been buried alive by a shell, as well as a family history of insanity, told in his favour. He was released after ten years and spent he rest of his life abroad in Canada, Vienna, Persia and South Africa where he died in 1951.
Seton was buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery and his sister, Isobel, chose his inscription. He may not have died as a result of the war but anyone serving in the armed forces of King George V, who died between 4 August 1914 the 31 August 1921 from whatever cause - including murder - was deemed to be a casualty of the war and entitled to a war grave.

LIKE YOUNG HOUNDS
STRAINING AT THE LEASH
THEY WOULD NOT BE DENIED

SAPPER ARTHUR WESTRAY TOOP

Mr Thomas Bethel Toop chose his son's inscription. The words imply that nothing could have held him back from joining the war effort. It's a image from Shakespeare's Henry V, who tells his men before the battle of Harfleur that: 'I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start'.
Arthur's brother, Thomas Westray Toop, was already in the navy when the war broke out. Arthur, a carpenter and joiner, enlisted on 6 August 1915, at the height of the Gallipoli campaign. He embarked from Australia on 14 October that year, arriving in Egypt where soldiers received further training before going into active service. But Toop died of typhoid fever the following month whilst still in Egypt.

GONE
AND THE LIGHT
OF ALL OUR LIFE
GONE WITH HIM

SERGEANT HARRY WOODNOTH

Harry Woodnoth was his parents only child, as you can gather from his inscription. His father, Frank, was a boot repairer in Wolverhampton and Harry was a labourer when he went to Australia in 1911 aged 22. He appears to have been back in England in January 1915 when he enlisted in the Australian Infantry.
Woodnoth served in Gallipoli from where he was evacuated with the rest of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 1 January 1916. He served with the 21st Battalion Australian Infantry, which joined the BEF in France on 26 March 1916. On 2 August that year, Woodnoth was severely wounded in the face, neck and right arm. Hospitalised in England, he returned to the front that November.
He died on 1 August 1918, the words on his record card read - 'wounded in action gassed'.
His mother, Elizabeth, signed for his inscription. She died in Wolverhampton in 1949 and her husband the following year.

BOY OF MY HEART, GOODNIGHT
NEVER GOODBYE
AGE 20 YEARS

PRIVATE WALLACE ROBERTSON JOHNSTONE

Wallace Johnstone's parents had read 'Boy of My Heart'; they have to have done. This was the book the popular novelist, Marie Connor Leighton, wrote in memory of her son, Roland Leighton. Roland was a prize-winning scholar from Uppingham School, the apple of his mother's eye, and Vera Brittain's fiance. (I have written more extensively about the book here.)
Roland was killed in December 1915 and the following year Marie published this hugely sentimental and over-the-top book. Under the title 'Boy of My Heart', there's a pencil portrait of Roland drawn by his sister the artist Clare Leighton, under which are the words:

"Goodnight!
Though life and all take flight
Never goodbye!"

The quotation, actually a purposeful misquotation, comes from WE Henley's poem, 'Echoes'. Henley's words are:

"Good-night, sweet friend, good-night:
Till life and all take flight,
Never good-bye."

Wallace Johnstone served in the 2nd Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery and was wounded in action on 23 February 1917. He died in hospital on 6 March. A week later, the hospital received an enquiry from the Australian Red Cross, asking if they could provide details of Johnstone's wounds, death and burial for his friends back in Melbourne. The hospital replied:

"From the O/C 18 General Hospital BEF
In reply to your letter of the 12th inst regarding the late No 3312 Pte WR Johnstone 2nd Aust TMB, please note he died at 9.am 6/3/17. He suffered from G.S. [gunshot] wounds in the left thigh which had been amputated, & also wounds of the R. arm. He was buried on the 7th ult at the British Military Cemetery, Etaples & the grave number is Q19."

ANOTHER LIFE LOST
HEARTS BROKEN FOR WHAT?

PRIVATE WILLIAM LINCOLN RAE

On 28 October 1916 Australians voted on whether to introduce conscription or not. The answer was, 'not', by 1,160,033 votes to 1,087,557. It was a deeply divisive, bitter and controversial subject. One year and two months later, on 20 December 1917, the public were asked again whether they would support the introduction of conscription and the answer was an even bigger 'no': 1,015,159 in favour and 1,181,747 against. One of the most vehement opponents of conscription, and the leader of the No-Conscription Campaign, was the Labour leader, Arthur Rae (1860-1943).
Rae had five sons, three of military service age; twins Charles and William and their younger brother, Donald. William and Donald enlisted on 28 December 1915, Charles on 27 December 1916, seven days after the no-conscription plebiscite, which his father had done so much to initiate.
William served with the 20th Battalion Australian Infantry and was killed in action on the opening day of the Battle of Amiens. Donald Rae served with the 19th Battalion and was taken prisoner at Hangard Wood on 12 April 1918. Repatriated to Britain on 11 December 1918, he died a month later of pneumonia following on from influenza.
Donald Rae is buried in Dumfries Cemetery, Scotland. His father chose his inscription:

Through fire, wounds, prison
Came safely
Then gazing homeward
Died

Arthur Rae chose his other son's inscription too, exposing his hostility to the war in which his sons had died.

HE HEARD THE DISTANT "COOEE"
OF HIS MATES ACROSS THE SEA

PRIVATE WILLIAM CHARLES DURRANT

There's a famous Australian recruiting poster that shows an Australian soldier with his legs bestriding the Dardanelles and his hands cupped round his mouth shouting, "Coo-ee- Won't you come?" to the men back home. Mrs Gladys Powell had this in mind when she chose her brother's inscription.
Durrant, a saddler from Rockhampton, Queensland, enlisted in October 1917. This was a year after the Australians had voted against the introduction of conscription by a majority of 72,476, and two months before a second vote rejected it by 166,588. He served in France with the 25th Battalion Australian Infantry and was killed in action on 17 July in an attack designed to "shorten and straighten our line" {Battalion War Dairy'.

GEORGE, A TARNAGULLA LAD
CELEBRATED HIS 16TH BIRTHDAY
AT ANZAC IN 1915

PRIVATE GEORGE DUNCAN RADNELL MM

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
This is to certify that I the undersigned, father of George Duncan Radnell of Tarnagulla whose age is eighteen years and five months, hereby grant my consent to his enlistment as a unit of the Expeditionary Forces now being trained at Broadmeadows, Victoria.
Wm J Randall
Dated at Tarnagulla this 19th day of Jan. 1915

At the beginning of March 1915, Radnell embarked from Australia with the 14th Australian Infantry for Egypt. A month later, on 14 April, the battalion set sail from Alexandria and on 26 April went ashore at 'Kaba Tepe', Anzac Cove. On 21 August Randell went sick with enteritis - dysentery - and was hospitalized in England, only returning to his unit at the end of November, just in time for the evacuation from the peninsula.
The battalion transferred to France and on 28 August 1916 Radnell was wounded in the left arm, 'shell wound'. Hospitalized again in England, he returned to the front at the beginning of January 1917. Wounded and hospitalized in England again in September, he returned to France in January 1918.
In September 1917, Radnell was awarded a Military Medal:

"During the operations near Zonnebeke on 26 September 1917, Pte Radnell displayed great courage and initiative by getting together a party of 7 men and rushing an enemy post in which were 10 Germans, killing four and taking the remainder prisoners."

On 31 May Radnell was wounded for a third time, this time in the shoulder, face and legs. He died in a Casualty Clearing Station the next day.

Now look at his inscription: "George, a Tarnagulla lad, celebrated his 16th birthday at Anzac in 1915". George was not 18 and five months when he enlisted, as his father must have known only too well. He was 15. But he wanted to be with his elder brother and cousins who had all gone to fight. His brother, Charles Victor Radnell, was killed on 27 February 1917, and one of his cousins, Joseph Charles Radnell, on 4 August 1916.

FOR HIS ENGLISH AND FRENCH
BROTHERS AND SISTERS

LIEUTENANT ELMER WINFRED DRAKE LAING MC

Elmer Laing's father, William Drake Laing, chose his inscription, very specifically giving the cause for which his Australian son had fought and died.
Born in Australia, educated in England and Marburg, Germany, Laing returned to Australia in 1911 when he was 18. He became a fruit grower, an orchardist, but joined up on 14 September 1914, barely a month after the outbreak of war.
He served with the 12th Battalion Australian Infantry, the first battalion to go ashore at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915. The battalion remained on Gallipoli until the evacuation in December. It was then deployed to France, fighting at Pozieres where Laing was awarded a Military Cross:

"Lieut, Laing was in command of his platoon in the attack at Pozieres which he led with conspicuous bravery and coolness. On the night of 24th July 1916 he commanded a patrol sent out to the N.E. corner of Pozieres to cover a party of Engineers digging a strong post and when they were driven back by machine gun fire he assisted to bring back a wounded man and by his coolness and courageousness fully got his patrol back to our line."

In the autumn of 1917 the battalion were engaged at Third Ypres and in the Spring of 1918 in attempting to halt the German offensive in the same region. On 4 May 1918 the 12th Battalion relieved the 4th in the line "east & south east of Strazeele". Laing was killed on the 8th, the war diary recorded:

"Heavy barrage of 4.2's & 7.7's on the two left companies & support company at 3 am during which Lieut E.W.D.Laing M.C. was killed."

"For his English and French brothers and sisters."

MY BELOVED FIRST BORN

LIEUTENANT JACK KEITH CURWEN-WALKER

Jack Keith Curwen-Walker was the eldest of John and Lucy Curwen-Walker's seven children. John Curwen-Walker died in 1905 and the children went to live with their father's mother and his sisters. A letter from their mother, in Curwen-Walker's service file, explains that, after her husband's death, "circumstances necessitated my little sons (sic) living with his grandmother & Aunts who supervised his education until the age of 17 years when he began to care for himself".
Curwen-Walker was a keen sportsman and something of a speed merchant. He represented the State of Victoria in ice hockey and was a member of the team that won the first inter-state Goodall Cup in 1910. In 1914 he broke the Australian motor-cycling speed record over one hundred miles when he cut 47 minutes off the previous record, which had only been set three weeks earlier. Curwen-Walker, riding "an Indian machine", averaged 56 mph over the course.
The American 'Indian Motor Cycle Company', was at this time the largest manufacturer of motor cycles in the world. Such was Curwen-Walker's enthusiasm for the machines that just before the war he took up an agency for the company.
In October 1916, he joined the Australian Flying Corps, giving one of his aunts, Miss Isabella Curwen-Walker as his next-of-kin. Qualifying as a pilot in September 1917 - delayed by having to recover from a crash - he joined No. 2 Squadron in Palestine in January 1918.
On the morning of 3 May 1918, soon after taking off from the airfield, Curwen-Walker's plane was seen to spin and crash. It was thought that through inexperience he had tried to climb too quickly. Both he and his observer, Corporal Jensen were killed.
Initially it was his aunt, Isabella, as his next-of-kin, who was informed of his death, but it was his mother who eventually chose his inscription.

"WE SEE THE SIGN
OF A FUTURE GRAND
AS WE GAZE ON A RISING STAR"

PRIVATE SAMUEL ERNEST CRANE

Samuel Ernest Crane was a veteran of the South African War who re-enlisted in March 1915 and was given the rank of corporal. He served in Gallipoli, where he was wounded and hospitalised in England. He spent a year in England, training soldiers once he'd recovered, and being promoted to the rank of sergeant. However, he wanted to return to the front and was prepared to be reduced to the rank of private to achieve this. He served with the 6th Battalion Australian Infantry and was wounded in both legs on 16 April 1918. He died in a Casualty Clearing Station four days later.
His inscription comes from a poem called 'My Land and I' (1903), written by Henry Lawson (1867-1922). Lawson was one of the most famous and popular of all Australian writers, revered as someone who "represented the real voice of Australia". It was a voice that would have preferred Australia to be 'white'. Sites that feature his poetry today come with a warning that:

"the phrasings used in his lifetime were correct for his time period in that the usage of terms not regarded as "politically correct" today were quite acceptable at that time and were not regarded as "offensive".

'My Land and I' is a savage attack on the sort of people who insisted that Australia was dead, finished. This is the last verse.

The parasites dine at your tables spread
(As my enemies did at mine),
And they croak and gurgle, 'Australia's dead'
While they guzzle Australian wine.
But we heed them never, my land, my land,
For we know how small they are,
And we see the signs of a future grand
As we gaze on a rising star.

THE GUNNER SMILED
AS HE WENT OUT WEST

GUNNER HARRY TWYFORD TRUMAN

War Diary 5th Australian Field Artillery Brigade
19 April 1918
"Snow fell during the day. Hail and snow showers at intervals and very cold wind."

At mid-day, Gunner Truman and eight other members of his battery were gathered round a fire in an old house in the village of Lavieville waiting for their dinner when a German shell crashed through the roof killing one gunner and wounding the other eight. Truman was hit by pieces of shell all over his body and head and died soon afterwards. Truman was "a bright, high spirited chap", with a "fresh complexion, shortish, always lively".
All this information was given by various witnesses to the Australian Red Cross who conveyed it to his parents in South Africa. Truman was born in Sydney and was working there as a draughtsman when he enlisted in January 1916. His parents were by this time in Pretoria, South Africa.
His father chose his inscription. It comes from a poem, which I found published on 26 September 1918 in the Southern Reporter, a Scottish newspaper, and again in the book, 'Victory Over Blindness: how it was won by the men of St Dunstan's and how others may win it' (1919) by Sir Arthur Pearson. It's introduced in this book with the comment that it was by a 'St Dunstaner'.
I'll reproduce it in full.

The Gunner smiled as his breachblock closed,
His arm was steady, his grip was tight;
The Gunner smiled, and his face beamed bright
In the twilight flush of an autumn night.
Silent columns of moving men
Moved to a point in a neighbouring glen,
And the Gunner smiled.
The Gunner smiled as his gun spoke loud,
With deafening crash and darkening cloud;
The Gunner smiled as the darkness fell,
Smiled at the wreck of shot and shell.
The Gunner smiled with firm fixed eye
On the field of death, where brave men die.
Then he sank down slowly beside his gun,
And smiled, though his course was nearly run;
Though his heart beat faint in his wounded breast.
The Gunner smiled as he went out west.

"BECAUSE"
R.I.P

PRIVATE WILLIAM HENRY CROWE

William Crowe was killed because he went with a group of soldiers to get some straw from a haystack to make their shelter more comfortable for the night just as a German plane flew the haystack and dropped four bombs. Crowe was severely injured and two other soldiers were killed outright. Crowe died of his wounds the next day. All this comes from his Australian Red Cross file. However, I cannot believe that his brother had this in mind when he chose Crowe's inscription. In fact, it's possible that his brother never knew how Crowe died since the copy of the letter in his service file just says he was killed in action. But perhaps some of Crowe's friends passed on the facts.
So what could it mean? Are the speech marks significant? Is it a reference to Emily Dickinson's poem:

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me,
The carriage held but just ourselves -
And immortality

Or perhaps it's just a fatalistic comment - because ... It's another one to add to the list of enigmatic inscriptions.
Crowe was an iron moulder from Camperdown, Sydney, New South Wales. He enlisted in January 1916 and served with the 17th Battalion Australian Infantry. They had just come out of the line at Gentelles and were about to bivouac for the night at Bois de Blangy.

THE SHIPS CAME BACK
WITH HONOURED BRAVE
BUT NONE CAME BACK
WITH OUR DAVE

PRIVATE DAVID EDWARD ARNOLD

This heartfelt piece of verse was written by Private Arnold's father. It was, of course, extremely difficult for the bereaved when the soldiers came home to great rejoicing. For some relations these were the hardest days of all.
David Arnold enlisted in September 1915 aged 18. He left Australia in January 1916 and served with the 55th Battalion Australian Infantry in France from 12 August 1917. He was killed by a shell in the trenches on 16 April 1918. A witness told the Australian Red Cross:

"I knew both the above [Lieutenant Collins and Private DE Arnold] - they were in No. 1 Platoon. We were in the front line at Villers-Bretonneux ... I did not see them killed but was told that a shall burst in the trench and killed six of them ... This was in the morning. That same night, as I was doing despatch running, I saw Collins and Arnold being carried out of the trench, and I subsequently saw the Pioneers making crosses for their graves ... I knew them both well. Arnold was a stretcher bearer. He was a nuggety fellow - a bit deaf - fairish complexion - we called him Dave."

"THEY FOUGHT AND DIED
AS WE KNEW THEY WOULD -
AS WE KNEW THEY WOULD"

PRIVATE EUGENE ALPHONSUS EDMAN

Private Edman's father, George Hunston Edman, chose some lines from The Song of the Dardanelles by Henry Lawson for his son's inscription. It's a very nationalistic poem heroising the Australian landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915:

The sea was hell and the shore was hell,
With mine, entanglement and shell,
But they stormed the heights as Australians should,
And they fought and they died as we knew they would.
Knew they would -
Knew they would;
They fought and they died as we knew they would.

Edman, who served with the 20th Battalion Australian Infantry, landed on Gallipoli on 22 August 1915. After the battalion was withdrawn in December, it was sent to France. Here, on 12 April 1918, Edman was one of two soldiers wounded when the Germans shelled the town where they were billeted. He was admitted to hospital with a compound fracture of his left femur and died two days later.
His father, who filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia, told how Edman's eldest brother had lost an eye in a bayonet charge at Armentieres and another brother had been wounded in April 1918 during the Battle of the Lys.

HIS NAME IS WRITTEN
IN LETTERS OF LOVE
IN HEARTS HE LEFT BEHIND

PRIVATE RONALD WILLIAM RESCHKE

This is a very popular inscription from an equally popular piece of memorial verse regularly printed in the 'In Memoriam' columns of newspapers:

We think we can see his smiling face
As he bade his last good-bye,
When he left his home forever
In a foreign land to die.
He sleeps beside his comrades
In a grave across the foam,
But his name is written in letters of love
On the hearts he left at home.

Ronald William Reschke was a labourer in Kyogle, New South Wales when he enlisted on 31 October 1916. He served with the 31st Battalion Australian Infantry and was killed on the 10 April 1918.
On the night of the 9/10 April, the 31st Battalion relieved the 58th in the Corbie sector of the front line. The war diary reports that the enemy was very quiet during the relief but that their artillery became very active during the day:

"At 1.30 pm enemy shelled farm occupied by us in J.34 central with 40 rds of 5.9" and 4.2". Three direct hits on the farm caused 27 casualties ... "

Reschke was one of the 27 as these were the only casualties to be reported that day.

A HUMAN SACRIFICE
ON THE ALTAR OF DUTY

PRIVATE EDWIN MARTIN

On the 28 March 1918 the 40th Battalion Australian Infantry were rushed up to the front to try and close the gap that was developing between the British 3rd and 5th Armies under pressure from the German offensive. The Germans were held for a short while but eventually the Australians were forced to withdraw, having suffered huge casualties, among them Private Edwin Martin.
Martin was first treated for a fractured femur, and for gun shot wounds in his thigh and side at a Field Ambulance on the 28th. He was passed the same day to a Casualty Clearing Station. Four days later he was admitted to a hospital in Etaples. Here his left leg was amputated but he died that same day, 1 April 1918.
Martin's brother, Howard Martin, chose his inscription - who was sacrificing who? Christ sacrificed himself on the cross to save mankind. I would suggest Edwin Martin sacrificed himself.
There was no conscription in Australia, every Australian soldier was a volunteer. It was a deeply controversial issue but despite there being two referendums on the issue, the public never voted for it. Martin enlisted on 14 November 1916, just two weeks after the first referendum had voted 1,087,557 in favour and 1,160,033 against; a majority of 72,476 against conscription. Martin sacrificed himself for what he saw as his duty.

I FOUGHT AND DIED
IN THE GREAT WAR
TO END ALL WARS
HAVE I DIED IN VAIN?

SERGEANT PHILIP JAMES BALL MM

Is there doubt in this question or is it more of a prompt? Is Clara Ball, Sergeant Ball's sister, doubting that the Great War was the war to end all wars or is she reminding people of what it was meant to be and that they need to make sure it comes about?
It's not possible to tell but as it seems that Ball's permanent headstone was in place by 1920 it's more likely to be a prompt. Doubt about the war didn't creep in until later in the decade.
How could people see it as the war to end all wars? It was simple, German/Prussian militarism needed to be crushed for all time and then world peace would be possible. In the fifty years prior to 1914 Prussia had fought its neighbours - Denmark, Austria-Hungary, France - and in more recent years it had had the temerity to challenge the British Empire and the Royal Navy. Would defeat and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles bring an end to German threats, and would the people of the world put their backs into being worthy of the dead and into supporting initiatives like the League of Nations.
Philip James Ball was born in Birmingham to Henry George and Emily Ball. His two eldest siblings were born in England but the next three were born in Australia where Henry George had gone to try his hand at farming. However, by the time of Philip's birth in 1897 the family had returned to Britain. Nevertheless, in 1914, at the age of 17, Philip went to Australia where he worked in the dairy industry. He enlisted in the Australian Infantry on 24 January 1916 and embarked for Europe on 6 June 1916.
Ball served with the 44th Battalion Australian Infantry and went missing on 28 March 1918. Enquiries to the Red Cross elicited the following response:

"Bell came from West Australia; was medium build, fair & had the MM ... About March 28th we were at Sailly le Sec. About 11.30 pm we went to try & locate the Germans & had advanced about 1000 yards beyond our first line when we came on a nest of M.G. We retired about 100 yards & dug in behind the crest of a small hill. I saw both men when we started on our attack but neither returned. We searched the ground the same night and got in all our wounded but could get no news of the men named. If the bodies had been there I think they would have been found. So I think they must have got & wandered into the German lines."

In September 1918, Ball's body was discovered buried in a shell hole. After the war it was exhumed and reburied at Villers-Bretoneaux.

IN MEMORY OF MY SON
KILLED WHILST RESCUING
A WOUNDED COMRADE

TROOPER EDWARD BOYLE

"I met Boyle in Egypt; he and I were in the same Squadron. He came from Nundle or Trundle. He was slim and athletic - standing about 5'9", fair, clean-shaved. He played football well. On 28th March 1918 C & D Troop were lining a ridge at Amman in support of "B" Squadron. Lying in front of our position, 30 yards away, was a wounded B Squadron man. Boyle walked from D Troop to C Troop to get a better look at the wounded man; as he was walking over he said "There should be a good chance of getting him in" - just then he was shot through the head and was killed instantaneously. I recovered all his personal property from his body, including a little round bone identification disc - on it was "Mother-Hundle" (or Trundle). Six months later we came back to Amman and found Boyle's body lying where it had fallen. Sergeant McNair and I buried the body, McNair painted Boyle's name on the cross over the grave. Boyle was a very good fellow."
Informant: No. 571 Corporal NJ Ausburn
Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau Files 2869 Trooper Edward Boyle 6th Light Horse

The 6th Light Horse had been ordered to make an attack on Amman but were met by stubborn Turkish resistance. On the 28 March they took up positions on the extreme left flank of the brigade:

"At 14.00 A and B Squadrons made a dismounted attack on Amman from the North with 7th LH Regt on their right. At 1530 they were forced to withdraw owing to the great strength of the enemy on this flank. Casualties 6 officers, 50 O/Ranks killed & missing."
War Diary 6th Australian Light Horse

Edward Boyle was the son of George and Caroline Boyle of Waterloo, New South Wales. He enlisted on 1 February 1916 and embarked from Australia on the 19 September the same year.

A NOBLE SON
WHO DID HIS DUTY TO GOD
KING AND PARENTS

CAPTAIN HARRY WEBBER

Captain Harry Webber, aged 23 when he was killed in action on 10 March 1918, is not to be confused with his namesake, Lieutenant Harry Webber, who was 68 when he was killed on the Somme by a stray shell on 21 July 1916. Lieutenant Harry Webber is thought to have been the oldest man to have been killed at the front in the First World War.
Captain Webber enlisted on 20 August 1914. Webber, a turner and fitter, was already a sergeant in the Australian militia, the 92nd Infantry Regiment based in his home town of Launceston, Tasmania. He embarked from Hobart for Egypt on 20 October 1914 and served on Gallipoli after the landings in April 1915 where he was wounded and hospitalised. He rejoined his battalion in France and was wounded again. In January 1918 he was mentioned in dispatches. The recommendation reads:

"For conspicuous devotion to duty. He has always shown great energy, initiative and efficiency as Lewis Gun Officer, 2nd in Command & Company Commander. Although one of the youngest of the officers in the Bn he always sets an excellent example to the others. Was recommended for gallantry in action on 25/27 Feb. 1917."

His father, Henry Webber, signed for his inscription, describing his son as noble, in other words as having fine moral principles, and referring to the duty, the sense of moral responsibility, that his son felt towards God, King George V and his parents. There is something infinitely touching about the juxtaposition of these three, and for an Australian-born soldier it shows the unity his parents still felt with Britain, the Motherland of the Empire.

HE HEARD THE CALL
AND ANSWERED
HE FELL OPEN EYED
AND UNAFRAID

PRIVATE STANLEY ARTHUR JAMES LAMBERT

The brothers Stanley and Roy Lambert both had the same inscription. Stanley was killed on 17 February 1918, having only joined his unit in France a month earlier. Roy, who was 21, was killed on 11 July 1918 having been on active service since February 1916.
Soldiers' photographs were often framed in elaborate patriotic frames - especially if they had been killed - and one such frame features 'He heard the call and answered' in a banner across the top of the frame, along with the Australian flag and a vase of foliage that I can't quite make out but is probably made up of oak, laurel and wattle.
The second line of the inscription comes from Laurence Binyon's famous poem, For the Fallen, interestingly, from a verse that is now usually omitted:

They fought, they were terrible, nought could tame them,
Hunger, nor legions, nor shattering cannonade.
They laughed, they sang their melodies of England,
They fell open-eyed and unafraid.

The very next verse begins: 'They shall not grow old, as we that are left grown old'.
The Lambert brothers were both born in Australia. Roy was a poultry farmer when he enlisted in September 1915, and Stanley, who enlisted in November 1916, was an electrician. Stanley spent most of 1917 in England before joining his unit, the 24th Coy Australian Machine Gun Corps, on 26 January 1918.
According to a witness to the Australian Red Cross, Lambert was killed at a place called Sherwood Dump on Hill 60:

"He had been caught by a shell, pieces of which hit him about the head and side. He was badly hit and I think death must have been instantaneous."

Roy Lambert was similarly a casualty of shell fire. Sergeant Lewis reported to the Red Cross:

"On July 11th at night time, he was in charge of a ration party and passing a dangerous gully, was, I understand, killed instantly, owing to heavy enemy barrage; there was no wound and death was from concussion. I did not see the body but was told by C/S/M A King 82, of A Co. that he had seen it and there was no mark whatever on it."

Roy Lambert had done well in the army and was promoted to sergeant in December 1917. However, there is a curious incident on his record sheet, which relates that, whilst at Codford Camp, a large ANZAC training and transfer camp, he was seriously reprimanded and docked three days pay for being absent without leave from midnight on 19 February 1918 to 3 pm on the 22nd. What day had his brother been killed? The 17 February. It sounds to me as though Roy went on a 'blinder'. Interestingly, the reprimand had no effect on his rank.

PRO DEO ET PATRIA
"MOTHER DEAR I MUST GO"

GUNNER ARNOLD ALEXANDER MACULLY MACULLY

Macully was a volunteer, every Australian soldier was a volunteer as there was no conscription in Australia. But it was an issue that bitterly divided country. In October 1916 the Government held a referendum on the issue and was defeated by 72,000 votes. It held another referendum in December 1917 when it lost by 166,588 votes.
It may not look like it but Mrs Macully is referring to conscription in her son's inscription. Arnold Macully had recognised that he had a duty to fight for God and his country - the Latin 'Deo et patria' lending gravitas to the sentiment. But she hadn't forced him to do his duty: "Mother dear I must go" speaks of a tender but determined son and a mother who is unwilling to part with him. The implication is clear, Arnold Macully was no shirker and Mrs Macully had not forced her son to enlist.
Macully served with the 14th Brigade Australian Artillery. All the Australian divisions had been withdrawn from the Western Front for rest and recuperation after the Battle of Montbrehain on the 5 October. Not only were they exhausted having been in continuous action since August but there weren't enough Australian reinforcements to make up the casualties and some battalions were operating at less than half their strength. However, some artillery units remained to support the British and American infantry. The 14th Brigade was one of those that remained. On 23 October they were engaged at Le Cateau, providing a creeping barrage for a British attack.
Macully's Red Cross file states that he was admitted to the 55th Casualty Clearing Station on 23 October and died the next day. A witness told his mother:

"It happened at dusk one evening late in October, and Gunner Macully was in his dugout in the waggon lines when he was badly wounded by a shell in the thigh and side." His mate helped place "him on a stretcher, and carried him to an Ambulance by the road-side. He was quite conscious and chattered cheerfully to the Drivers Saunders and Edwards, telling them how to apply the Field Dressing. He was then taken away, and they learnt later that he has succumbed to his wounds."

I SAW THE POWERS OF DARKNESS
PUT TO FLIGHT
I SAW THE MORNING BREAK

LIEUTENANT BRUCE GARIE THOMSON

These lines come from a poem called Between Midnight and Morning, which is often said to have been found on the body of an Australian soldier killed at Gallipoli; the implication being that the soldier wrote it. Well, a copy of the poem could easily have been found on the body of an Australian soldier but he most definitely didn't write it because it was written by Owen Seaman, the editor of Punch, and published in December 1914 in King Albert's Book. However, the Australian story gave the poem great traction and it became known all over the world.

You that have faith to look with fearless eyes
Beyond the tragedy of a world at strife,
And trust that out of night and death shall rise
The dawn of ampler life:

Rejoice, whatever anguish rend your heart,
That God has given you, for a priceless dower,
To live in these great times and have your part
In Freedom's crowning hour.

That you may tell your sons who see the light
High in the heavens, their heritage to take: -
"I saw the powers of darkness put to flight!
I saw the morning break!"

Thomson was born and raised in Kapunda, South Australia. He began his career as an accountant but enlisted in November 1914 soon after the outbreak of war. He served with the 3rd Field Ambulance in Gallipoli from June to December 1915 and then transferred to France in March 1916. In January 1918 he returned to England and in May 1918 was gazetted Flying Officer (Observer) in No. 3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps. The squadron flew RE8s on reconnaissance, bombing and artillery spotting duties.
At 6 am on the morning of the 3 October 1918, Lieut Thomson and Lieut Gould Taylor took off from the airfield at Bouvincourt and never returned. Three days later a machine was found crashed at Folemprise Farm, 1,000 yards NW of Estrees. Beside the plane were two graves marked with the information that these were the graves of two unidentified Australian airmen. The plane could be identified by its number as Thomson and Gould-Taylor's and the bodies identified as their's. A year later their bodies were exhumed and buried in adjacent graves in Prospect Hill British Cemetery.
Thomson's father chose his inscription.

Rejoice, whatever anguish rend your heart,
That God has given you, for a priceless dower,
To live in these great times and have your part
In Freedom's crowning hour.

NOR ENGLAND DID I KNOW
TILL THEN
WHAT LOVE I BORE TO THEE

PRIVATE BERNARD MANNING BROWNING

This is a rather poignant inscription for an Australian soldier who was born in England in 1888 and only went to Australia in 1912 when he was 24. It was chosen by his wife Phyllis. She too was born in England although the couple married in Australia in 1913.
Browning volunteered in January 1918. There was no conscription in Australia; he must have wanted to go. However, January 1918 is quite late to be enlisting if you were someone who was keen to get to the war. This could be explained by his answer to the question on the attestation form - Have you ever been rejected for military service? Browning's answer is 'Yes - made fit by operation'. He had wanted to go, but he needed to undergo an operation before he could be considered fit enough.
Browning's inscription comes from Wordsworth's 'I Travelled Among Unknown Men' of which this is the first verse:

I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

I don't think Browning regretted going to Australia. He must have liked it since he persuaded his older brother, James, with his wife and two children, to join him in the country in 1913. But when England was in danger he realised what he felt for the old country.
Browning was killed in action at Beaurevoir on 3 October 1918, six weeks before the end of the war. The news went to his wife in Australia and his family in England only learnt of his death through friends. His sister therefore wrote to the Australian Red Cross to ask if they could tell her how he had died and whether he had been buried. They were able to assure her that he had been killed instantly and buried properly but spared her the full details, which they had learnt from the stretcher bearer who was first on the scene:

"I saw the above (all of B Coy) and one other man whose name I think was Lionel killed by one shell near Beaurevoir about 7 am during the attack about 1/2 hour or less after we hopped over. I was stretcherbearing & was following up behind them and was not 8 yards from them. Browning (killed instantly) was hit through head, Clarkson (instantly) thigh to knee badly smashed and concussion, Sgt, Crockett (instantly) all over body, Lionel (instantly) head, Langley hit on left collar bone and the artery was cut he was the only one with any life and I tried to dress the wound and succeeded in stopping the bleeding but he was dead before I finished ... Browning, Clarkson and Langley were all late joined us at Cappy, first time in line."

HIS LAST WORDS WERE
AS HE FELL
"GO ON 'C' COMPANY

CAPTAIN WILLIAM MCCARTHY BRAITHWAITE MC

William Braithwaite was killed whilst charging a machine gun in an attack at Estrees on 3 October 1918. This was a preliminary action to the Battle of Montbrehain on the 5th; the Australians last engagement of the war on the Western Front.
Braithwaite served with the 22nd Battalion Australian Infantry and its Report of Operations gives a brief glimpse of the action on the 3rd October:

"There were several instances where determined resistance was offered by small groups of Machine Gunners, and an examination of the ground after the attack evidenced the fact that the bayonets had been used by our men to a greater extent than usual."

After school and university, Braithwaite joined his father's tannery, the largest employer in the town of Preston, Victoria. He enlisted in July 1916 and embarked for Europe that October, joining his battalion in France in January 1917. A collection of his private letters, now held in the Australian National War Memorial, shows that he took part in the the actions at Bapaume, Bullecourt, Ypres, Broodseinde, Villers-Bretonneaux and the August 1918 offensive. It was at Bullecourt that he was wounded in the arm and face during an action for which he was awarded the Military Cross:

"For conspicuous gallantry in leading his men into the enemy's trenches during the attack near Bullecourt on 3 May 1917. Although twice wounded he persevered with the work of consolidating the position and leading bombing parties against the enemy strongpoints."

Braithwaite was back in action by July and served throughout the Battle of Passchendaele. He was wounded again at Franvillers in June 1918, had two weeks leave in England in September and was killed soon after his return.
It was his father, also William Braithwaite, who chose his inscription. Although he and his wife had six daughters, William was their only son. William Braithwaite Senior died on 5 August 1922 whilst on a trip to Europe with his wife to visit their son's grave.

GOD'S HUSBANDMAN THOU ART
IN HIS UNWITHERING SHEAVES
BIND MY HEART

DRIVER ALEXANDER APPLEBY

Driver Appleby's widow chose the final two lines of 'Laus Mortis' - In Praise of Death - by Frederic Lawrence Knowles (1869-1905) for her husband's inscription. Why should we praise death? Because it 'gives us life, and in exchange takes breath'; because 'Life lends us only feet, Death gives us wings', and because in death, whether we 'wear a crown or bear a yoke' we will all be equal, 'when once your coverlet of grass is spread'. Life is the sower and death is the reaper: 'God's husbandman'. Death has traditionally been portrayed as the reaper, Knowles takes the analogy further and portrays the dead as gathered corn, bound in 'unwithering' sheaves close to God.
Alexander Appleby, a horse driver in civilian life, came from Perth in Western Australia. He enlisted in March 1917 and served as a driver in the 3rd Australian Field Artillery Brigade. He died of wounds in hospital in Rouen on 25 September 1918. It's not possible to tell when he was wounded but the 3rd Artillery Brigade had been relieved on the 23rd and was resting at the 'Wagon Lines' on the 25th. Forty-five other ranks had been wounded during the month, Appleby may have been one of those. However, long term cases were nursed at Rouen so his wounds may have dated from earlier in the year. He is among 8,348 casualties buried in St Sever Cemetery Extension, all of whom died in one of the fifteen hospitals based in Rouen.

TRUE TO COUNTRY, KING AND MATE
LEAVING A SPOTLESS NAME

TROOPER ERNEST MCKAY

Trooper Ernest McKay was one of the fourteen 11th Australian Light Horsemen killed in the savage fighting at Samarkh on 25 September 1918. There's nothing to say whether he was killed in the cavalry charge or in the subsequent hand-to-hand fighting in the town. And nothing to say why the inscription refers to 'mate' in the singular rather than mates in the plural.
It's always interesting to see the cause or causes for which Australians fought. Today the idea that Australian nationhood was born in the First World War is commonplace, and is being fiercely promoted during the centenary. But McKay, Australian born, fought for his country and his King, and I would venture to suggest that by his country he meant Britain, or rather the British Empire for the terms were synonymous. Actually, to be accurate, the word most people would have used for Britain at this time, and for the whole British Empire, was 'England' but whichever word was used I don't think McKay was fighting just for Australia.
McKay was a carpenter from Brisbane. His mother chose his inscription and filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia. I love the way that, given the opportunity to say something that might "be of interest to the Historian of the AIF or of his regiment", she writes proudly that he was -

"One of the most popular boys in his regiment. Also a good footballer. In fact one of the best all round players over in Egypt."
[NB I have corrected some of the spelling a punctuation.]

Somehow I don't think this was the sort of information the historians were looking for!
As to the 'spotless name': McKay's service record shows that he embarked from Australia for Egypt on 30 September 1915; he spent from 3 January to 22 February in detention for an unspecified misdemeanour; in December 1916 he was punished for being absent without leave, and from 15 August to 22 December 1917 he was in hospital being treated for VD.
But none of this detracts from the fact that Ernest McKay, living in Australia where there was no conscription, volunteered to fight for King and country, an action that led to his death.

I MOURN FOR YOU IN SILENCE
BUT NOT WITH OUTWARD SHOW

LIEUTENANT WILLIAM CLARENCE MCGREGOR

This seems a very guarded inscription; it made me curious to know whether there was anything behind it and the more I looked into William Clarence McGregor the more dark thoughts I began to have about him.
His entire eight-eight-page service file has been digitised and for some time it made confusing reading.
The War Graves Commission record says that he was the son of Mrs Jessie McGregor and the late Dugald McGregor and that he served as Murray. According to the documents in his file, he enlisted on 17 September 1914 giving his name as William Clarence McGregor, his birthplace as Bellingen, New South Wales, his profession as motor driver, and his age as 21 and one month. In answer to the question had he ever been apprenticed he answered no. The next document in the file is his discharge paper. There is no information on it, no date of discharge and no information as to why he was discharged.
However, on 2 July 1915, the file contains the attestation form for Albert Murray. There is a note in red ink at the top of the form, 'Real name William Clarence McGregor'. 'Albert Murray' said he was born in Aukland, New Zealand, and that he was a motor mechanic who had been apprenticed for four years to his father in Aukland. In answer to the questions, 'Have you ever been discharged from HM Forces?', 'Have you ever served in HM Forces' and 'Have you ever been rejected as unfit?', his answer to every question was 'no'.
You can see why I was having dark thoughts about McGregor/Murray. Albert Murray received a commission in June 1916, embarked from Australia in January 1917 and served with the 49th Battalion Australian Infantry. However, he didn't get to France until the 17 November that year.
He seems to have been a bold soldier as testified by the manner in which he won his Military Cross on 17 August 1918:

"For conspicuous daring in dealing with a troublesome hostile machine-gun. Crawling over No Man's Land, he entered the enemy's trench & worked up it for about 150 yards, until he located the sentry mounted on the gun. He killed the sentry & captured the gun. After bombing a dug-out & killing an officer & four men, he made good his way back with two prisoners."

Note, citations usually read 'for conspicuous gallantry' not 'daring'. A month later whilst out on patrol he was hit by a machine-gun bullet and killed instantly.
At this point he was still known as Albert Murray. However, a year after his death his mother wrote to the military authorities to say that "as the mother of the above-named soldier, who was killed in action in France on the 16th September 1918, I desire to take the necessary steps to have his correct name recorded". This is the story she had to tell:

"My son enlisted to leave with the first lot of men to go and was very disappointed when he contracted rheumatic fever and instead of sailing with his camp comrades he had to go into hospital for 9 weeks and as a consequence received his discharge.
Later on when he considered that he had removed all trace of the [disease] he endeavoured to re-enlist but was advised that his former illness which had to be disclosed would come against him.
Not to be defeated in this worthy object he enlisted in a name other than his own and sailed as if Lieut Albert Murray in the troopship Ayrshire in 1916 ... "

Mrs McGregor obviously convinced the authorities, which is why his file has 'Correct name William Clarence McGregor' written over all his forms. She also got his correct name carved onto his headstone. However, it's interesting to note that the War Graves Commission told her that they would also include the name under which he served, reasoning:

"If the correct name only appeared in view of the fact that he served under the assumed name there would be danger of his identity being lost sight of."

So, my dark thoughts about McGregor were totally unfounded. His reasons for disguising his identity far from being nefarious were down to the fact that he was keen to join the action and feared that his medical history, if suspected, would prevent him doing so.

HE CROSSED THE BAR
FOR HIS COUNTRY
IN THE GLORIOUS CHARGE
OF BEERSHEBA

CORPORAL JOHN FIELDING

On 31 October 1917 the British (at the time the term British would automatically have included Empire and Commonwealth soldiers) secured the capture of the Ottoman-held town of Beersheba with a magnificent Australian cavalry charge that has gone down in legend. The capture of the town, important though it was, was perhaps of less importance than the capture of its wells since the British soldiers and their horses had been short of water for days.
Some parts of the town had been captured during the day but the British wanted total possession and the day was getting late. The commanders therefore decided to gamble on a full-scale cavalry charge and the task was entrusted to the 4th and 12th Australian Light Horse regiments. Much has been written about this famous charge, which rode off at 4.30 pm just as the sun was beginning to set. Armed only with their bayonets, the cavalry was organised into three lines, each line 300 yards apart, and each man keeping a distance of five yards between him and the next to minimise the impact of enemy artillery. As the Ottoman lines came into view the Australians spurred their horses into a gallop and rode straight into a hail of artillery and machine-gun fire. Within in an hour they had achieved their objective and although the Ottoman commander tried to destroy the wells all but two were saved.
It was a magnificent achievement but amongst all the hyperbole that has been subsequently written about the event, I love the 12th Light Horse's laconic war diary entry:

October 31 1917:
"The Regiment moved on Beersheba at the gallop. Heavy enemy rifle and machine gun fire developed on the left flank ... This fire was silenced by artillery. The leading Squadron came under very heavy rifle fire and machine gun fire from the trenches, ... On reaching a point about 100 yards from these trenches, one Troop of A Squadron dismounted for action, and the remainder of the Squadron galloped on ... The Regiment, less 1 troop, kept straight on to Beersheba."

John Fielding was in A Squadron. Eight hundred men began the charge in which 31 were killed, mainly in the hand-to-hand fighting in the trenches.
Fielding was born in Rawtenstall, Manchester and arrived in Australia in 1908 when he was 13. He enlisted in January 1915 and served in Gallipoli from August to December that year. His father chose his inscription. He began it with a reference to Tennyson's Crossing the Bar, a euphemism for dying:

Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea

And concluded it by indicating his pride in his son's participation in this legendary event. There's one other point about the inscription. John Fielding's father says, 'he crossed the bar for his country', which country? I'm going to say Britain, and by that I mean the British Empire because at that time many Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians and South Africans thought of themselves as British, despite the fact that so many episodes, like the 'glorious charge at Beersheba', have now become building blocks in the construction of their various nationhoods.

AN O.L.
HE BECAME
A PROFITABLE MEMBER
OF THE KING AND COMMONWEALTH

SERGEANT FRANK NICHOLLS KNIGHT

On 1 November 1918 Frank Knight came home on leave from France to stay with his mother's brother at Severn Street in Leicester. Nine days later he was dead. The cause of his death: pneumonia following influenza. He was buried in Leicester's Welford Road Cemetery after a full military funeral that included buglers and a firing party.
Knight's family lived in Australia, where they had gone in 1912 when he was 17. He had been born in Witherley in Leicestershire and grown up in Rugby, Warwickshire where his father, Isaac Knight, ran the Queen's Head pub. Knight attended Lawrence Sherriff School in Rugby. This makes him an Old Laurentian, an O.L. as it says on his inscription.
Knight, a draughtsman, enlisted in Melbourne in March 1916. It would appear that he spent some time training to be a machine gunner and then training machine gunners at the Machine Gun Training Centre in Grantham, Lincolnshire. In January 1918 he went to France, from where he came on leave on 1 November 1918 to die two days before the end of the war.
I find the the syntax of his inscription rather curious: 'He became a profitable member of the King and Commonwealth'. It has rather a seventeenth-century ring to it. However, by Commonwealth Isaac Knight wasn't referring to the kingless government of England following the civil war, nor to the British Commonwealth of Nations but to the Commonwealth of Australia the country's official name following the federation of the six self-governing colonies on 1 January 1901. Isaac Knight was stating that his son was both a valuable subject of His Majesty King George V and a useful member of the Commonwealth of Australia.

This inscription will feature as part of the Global War Graves Leicester project, which aims "to explore and bring to light how the 298 First World War casualties came to be buried in the cemetery, how their identities were negotiated in death; and how even the British burials alongside them also had connections throughout and beyond the UK. The purpose of this research will be to challenge and expand our understandings of the relationship between local and global in terms of Leicester and the First World War".

"TO THIS END WAS I BORN"

PRIVATE HERBERT HENRY SOMERSET MARKS

This sounds rather a harsh inscription for a parent to chose for their son: "To this end was I born". It comes from St John's gospel and was chosen by Private Mark's father, Major Herbert Beaumont Marks. In St John, Christ has been brought before Pontius Pilate to be tried.

"Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.
St John 18 v. 37

The inscription implies that Major Marks was one of those who believed war with Germany to be inevitable, the logical conclusion of the growth of German militarism. And this being the case, that he knew his son was in line to be sacrificed in the forthcoming war. In 1910, Major HB Marks had been appointed Area Officer for the town of Townsville in Northern Queensland. This put him in charge of the local militia and of recruitment, making sure that even the young men of Townsville were prepared for war.
His son enlisted on 20 May 1916 when he was 18 and 9 months. Prior to this young Marks had been working as a station hand. He embarked from Australia in September 1916 and served with the 41st Battalion Australian Infantry. This took part in the Australian attack on Peronne on 1 September 1918. It was a terrible battle, the machine-gun fire, especially the enfilade, the greatest the battalion had ever experienced causing many casualties. The war diary is unusually descriptive:

"This fire also prevented us from removing some of our casualties from the front line as the Boche fired on stretcher bearers, killing and wounding a whole team. We took a large number of prisoners, some two hundred and fifty, together with five Field Guns, the teams of which "D" Coy. Lewis Gunners shot on reaching their objective, while the enemy was trying to withdraw them."

Marks was one of the 120 casualties suffered by the 41st battalion that day.

HE WAS A FATHER TO HIS MEN
THE END OF THE UPRIGHT MAN
IS PEACE

LIEUTENANT FREDERICK GEORGE LEWIS

The paternal relationship officers had with their men has often been commented on and here it is confirmed by one officer's mother. Of course an officer was concerned that his men had the correct equipment, were on time for parades and duties and remained fit, but there was more to it than that. Lieutenant Ewart Alan Mackintosh expressed it most powerfully in his poem, In Memoriam, written in 1916. This is verse 5:

Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers',
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.

Mackintosh was 23 when he wrote the poem - he was killed the following year. Lewis was nearly ten years older.
The second part of Lewis's inscription references Psalm 37, which is much concerned with the just deserts of the virtuous and the wicked man. The inscription comes from verses 37/8:

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.
But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.

Frederick Lewis's mother not only chose his inscription but also filled in the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia, making an unusually thorough job of it. Beside the request for 'Unit and number if known' she has replied, 'In Command D Company, 42 Battalion, 3rd Australian Division'. And asked for where he was killed she has put, 'Peronne Sector, N.E. Mont St Quentin, Near Clery sur Somme'. She also tells us that he was 'a valued officer - staff - of the Bank of New South Wales, Brisbane Branch' and that he had been a scholarship boy at Brisbane Boys Grammar School.
Lewis was killed in action on the 1 September 1918 in the Australian attack on Peronne.

HIS LAST MESSAGE
"I DIED DOING MY DUTY"

PRIVATE NORMAN JOHN WARREN HOFFMEYER

What is duty? For some people today it has become synonymous with the word chore, but that is not how men like Private Hoffmeyer saw it. To them 'duty' was something you owed, in this case to your country, something you felt to be morally right despite the fact that it might involve self-sacrifice. There was no conscription in Australia so those who volunteered did so for any number of reasons, which in Norman Hoffmeyer's case amounted to a sense that it was his duty to do so.
Hoffmeyer, a farmer from Bendigo in Victoria, enlisted in September 1916, admitting that he had previously been rejected on the grounds of 'bad feet'. He served at the front from March 1917 except for two weeks in June 1917 when he was wounded, and two weeks in Britain in March 1918 when he was on leave.
On the 31 August 1918 at 4.20 am, the 38th Battalion took over the front line near the Canal du Nord prior to an attack. The war diary reported that at 3.15 pm the 37th Battalion moved through to continue the attack and the 38th went into reserve. 'Moved through' gives a hint as to how the fighting in August had changed from the trench warfare of the past four years, so do the diary's references to 'semi-open' and 'rapidly moving' warfare.
There is no indication as to how Hoffmeyer met his death. His family did not request information from the Australian Red Cross perhaps because, as his inscription suggests, someone was with him when he died who passed on the information. This suggestion is supported by a chance discovery in 2007. Two cousins, sorting out a shed in the family property on the outskirts of Bendigo, came across a collection of First World War photographs that had been taken by their fathers, Jack and Bert Grinton. The brothers served with the 38th Battalion and among the images in the collection is one of Hoffmeyer's grave, marked with a wooden cross. Evidence perhaps that Hoffmeyer was among friends when he died.

IN LIFE I FEAR FOR MYSELF
IN DEATH
I FEAR FOR MY MOTHER
MOTHER

GUNNER THOMAS HANSON

Thomas Hanson's mother wanted to demonstrate her son's consideration towards her in the inscription she chose for his headstone. Presumably he had expressed these fears to her, fearing how she would cope with his death.
Hanson, a sheep overseer whose family emigrated to Australia sometime after the 1901 census, enlisted in October 1916. He reached Britain in July 1917, embarked for France in September and was killed in October.
On 22 March 1918, Driver FJ Brophy told the Red Cross Enquiry Bureau:

"I did not see the casualty, but I saw his dead body soon after it happened. He was unloading a waggon just in front of Zillebeke, when he was caught by a piece of shell, which entered his back and went through his heart, death was instantaneous. I knew him very well, he was the only man of this name in the battery."

Gunner AS Miller reported on 8 March 1918:

"I saw him killed at the Half-way House, near Ypres. He was caught by pieces of shell which hit him about the chest, death being instantaneous. He had not been with the battery very long, as he was a new reinforcement."

And how did Thomas Hanson's mother cope with his death? In May 1920 she sailed to England from where she went to France to visit his grave, something very few Australian mothers would have been able to afford to do.
It's strange how you can build up a picture of a person - and be wrong. I had Mrs Hanson down as a poor widow and Thomas as her only son. Thomas was her only son but Mrs Hanson was a remarried divorcee. The information comes from a reply to a letter the army authorities had written asking for clarification about Thomas Hanson's father. Her new husband replied:

"I have to inform you that the father of the late soldier is still alive, as far as I know, but am absolutely ignorant of his address. I also have to inform you that Mrs Hanson divorced her husband some years ago and has been married to me since then."
Mr FW Gregory 24 May 1920

THOUGH LOST TO SIGHT
TO MEMORY DEAR

GUNNER ROBERT SAMUEL BARBER

Until I did the research for yesterday's inscription, it would never have occurred to me that this was a quotation. 'Though lost to sight to memory dear' is so popular on both civilian and military headstones, and it appears so regularly on In Memoriam cards and the In Memoriam columns of newspapers that I had just assumed it was something that you said, no author required. But this appears not to be the case. The words are in fact the first line of a song written by George Linley (1798-1865) who wrote it originally for Augustus Braham (1819-1889). This is the first of its seven verses:

Tho' lost to sight, to memory dear
Thou ever wilt remain;
One only hope my heart can cheer -
The hope to meet again.

Some have argued that Linley didn't compose the first line he just quoted from what was already a popular headstone inscription. It is possible that this was the case. Certainly there's another poem, strictly speaking I suppose it's verse rather than poetry, where it's the final line of both of the two verses - the authorship is disputed but it postdates Linley. This is the second verse.

Sweetheart, good bye! One last embrace!
O cruel fate, two souls to sever!
Yet in the heart's most sacred place
Thou alone shall dwell for ever.
And still shall recollection trace,
In fancy's mirror ever near.
Each smile, each tear, that form, that face,
Though lost to sight to memory dear.

However, I am perfectly prepared to admit that the many hundreds of people who chose this inscription, and it is one of the most popular, had no idea that they were quoting either Linley or anyone else. To them it was just a conventionally popular headstone inscription.
In this instance it belongs to Gunner Robert Samuel Barber, who before the war had been helping his father on his dairy farm in Yandina, Queensland, Australia. Barber enlisted on 23 September 1915, embarked from Australia on 11 May 1916, arrived in Britain on 10 July and embarked for France on 24 November. He was killed by a shell on 3 October 1917.
A witness (Sergeant H. Canfield 18849) who described Barber as "about 5 feet 6 inches high, nuggety build, clean shaven, fair complexion, aged about 25", told the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing File what happened:

"Informant states that they both belonged to the 25th Battery, 7th Field Artillery Brigade, Barber being a lumber gunner and under Informant's charge. On or about 3.10.17 the Battery was in front of Ypres in action, firing at different targets. Barber was working with him and left him to go over to his gun, No. 1, and went into a little dugout that he was building alongside the gun. He had only been there about a minute when a stray shell came over and killed him instantly. Informant was only a few yards away at the time and saw his body. He was buried not far from the Battery and informant made a cross for his grave."

The cross survived and after the war it was found with Barber's body at map reference I. 6. b. 8. 1. just as Sergeant H. Canfield had made it, inscribed with the words:

In memory of
No. 18641 Gunner Barber R.S.
C of E
Killed in action 3-10-1917

A MAN SHALL BE
AS AN HIDING PLACE
FROM THE WIND

SERGEANT RONALD DANIEL WALLACE

It may not be immediately obvious but this inscription is one of the numerous ways that next-of-kin declared their trust in God. The words come from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, 32:2 and were chosen by Sergeant Wallace's fiancee, Ruth Wright.

"And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."

In other words, this man, who will be our shield from the wind, our shelter from storms, who will be like refreshing water on dry land or shade from the burning sun, will be the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And it is in Jesus that Sergeant Wallace's fiancee will find her 'hiding place from the wind', her comfort in her grief. It's a very beautiful image.
According to a letter in his Red Cross file, Wallace died from gas poisoning:

"His dug-out at Hill 40 was blown up by a gas-shell on the 19th. He not only got himself out but he managed to get his mate Serg. Murray out as well and this is what killed him; he had no business to do it when he was gassed. The flesh was blown off Murray's feet and Wallace dressed him and then noticed the gas; but it was too late then. He came over to my dug-out about 2 am. I had two tubes of ammonia and gave him that and some tea and kept his mask on (you get more gas from the clothes than from the air) and kept him there the rest of the night and then sent him to the D/S [dressing station] in the morning. He died in Hosp. on the 27th but I do not know what Hosp. and I was too sick myself with the gas to make much enquiry at the time.
He was a School-teacher at Greenbushes; his people live at Jarradale Junction. He was engaged to Miss R. Wright; I have just got her address (Kenilms, Shenton Road, Claremont, W Aus) from his brother and I will write to her myself. "Ronnie' Wallace was a 'white man'; he would have had a commission but got on too well with his men. He was thoughtful for everyone. He had said to me 'I would not call you up; you have done your bit and there are plenty of big Sergts to do the work!
I was a Rifleman at that time; now S/B. He was C Co.
H.V.Sforcina
Calais 6.4.18

Ronald Wallace's eldest brother, Corporal Stephen Hubert Christian Wallace, was killed in action at Bony on 29 September 1918. His body was never found and he is commemorated on the Villers Bretonneux Memorial.

IN THAT RICH EARTH
A RICHER DUST CONTAINS

SAPPER STANLEY REES EDE

This may not be its most famous line but it certainly comes from one of the most famous poems of the First World War, Rupert Brooke's The Soldier, of which this is verse 1:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

Lines two and three are, not surprisingly, a popular inscription. Stanley Ede's father chose line four, changing the word 'conceals' to 'contains'. When relations change words it's difficult to know whether they've just misremembered the original or whether they meant it. I think Mr William Edward Ede meant it - the earth should be proud to contain his son's 'richer dust', whereas there could be something furtive about concealing it.
The poem is full of nostalgic melancholy:

And think this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

William Edward Ede emigrated to Australia with his wife and three children in 1912. Having been born and grown up in Devon, is there a longing for the old country and the old days concealed in his choice of inscription? The family are Australians now, that is why his son's grave cannot be 'forever England'.
And there could be a deeper regret too. When Stanley Ede joined up on 1 May 1915 he declared he was 18 and 3 months. A handwritten note beside this answer says, "Parents consent attached". However, according to the British records, Ede was born in the first quarter of 1898. He was therefore only 17 and 3 months. A fact confirmed by his father on the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia when he gives his son's age at death as 19 and 9 months.
Ede, a plumber, served with the 12th Field Company Australian Engineers. Sturdy and of fresh complexion, Ede was, according to his comrades, "full of fun and almost invariably singing". A witness told the Australian Red Cross that he "was killed at Zonnebeke by a piece of shell which hit him in the neck and killed him outright".

IN THAT
GREAT CLOISTER'S STILLNESS
HE LIVES
WHOM WE CALL DEAD

GUNNER HARRY SAMPSON SAMPSON

The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) is the author of a surprising number of headstone inscriptions of which this is one. It comes from his poem, Resignation, composed following the death of his daughter Fanny. Longfellow holds out the consolation that "oftentimes celestial benedictions / assume this dark disguise", and what seem to us "but sad, funereal tapers / may be heaven's distant lamps".

There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.

It is in the 'life elysian'

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.

Harry Richards was a gunner serving with the 46th Battery 12th Australian Field Artillery Brigade at Zillebeke when he was killed near the Menin Road. A witness told the Red Cross Enquiry Bureau:

"He was dark, cleanshaven, slim, about 5'6", and about 21 or 22. He was killed whilst mending our telephone wire on 1st Oct. on the Passchendaele front. I was told this by Sig. Norman Potts, who was with him at the Dickebusch and a cross put over his grave."

Richards' South Australian Division Red Cross file can be read here. Unusually, it not only names his mother as his next-of-kin, but also his fiancee, Miss Doris Baldwin.

OF KILLARA, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

CORPORAL WILLIAM ALAN MASCHWITZ

Corporal Alan Maschwitz was a long way from home when he died of 'penetrating' shrapnel wounds to his left thigh on 11 August 1917. He came from Killara, a leafy suburb of Sydney, where his parents had recently built themselves a house, Lyttleton, close to the golf course. I suspect that golf was an important part of the family's life; Alan is listed on the Killara Golf Club Roll of Honour, which at one time awarded a Maschwitz Cup - and perhaps still does - and Mr William Percy Maschwitz, Alan's father, served as both president and vice-president of the club.
Maschwitz left school in 1913 and went to work on a sheep station as a jackaroo, someone who was learning the business in order to become an owner, overseer or manager. He joined up in 1915 and sailed for Suez on 18 December 1915. In March 1916 he became a member of the newly-formed 104th Howitzer Battery, Australian Field Artillery and served with them from May 1916 until his death in August 1917.
Alan Maschwitz was his parents only child. Born on 24 November 1896, he was still only 20 when he died.

HOW COULD I STAY

DRIVER TALBOT PRESTON ROBERTSON

Talbot Robertson Preston had the signed permission of both his parents when he joined up at the age of 18 and 3 months on 26 August 1916. He needed it as without this permissio, he would not have been able to go abroad until he was 19. This means that he was still only 18 and 7 months when he embarked for Britain on 23 December 1916. But as his headstone inscription asks - How could I stay? This wasn't just a simple statement but the last line of a very patriotic piece of verse written by James Drummond Burns who, like Talbot Robertson, was a former pupil of Scotch College in Melbourne.

The bugles of England were blowing o'er the sea,
As they had called a thousand years, calling now to me;
They woke me from dreaming in the dawning of the day,
The bugles of England - and how could I stay?

The banners of England, unfurled across the sea,
Floating out upon the wind, were beckoning to me;
Storm-rent and battle torn, smoke stained and grey,
The banners of England - and how could I stay?

O England, I heard the cry of those that died for thee,
Sounding like an organ-voice across the winter sea;
They lived and died for England, and gladly went their way -
England, O England - how could I stay?

Robertson arrived in Britain on 17 February 1917 and on 22 August went to France. He was wounded barely a month later, on 29 September. Evacuated to a Casualty Clearing Station, he was operated on the next day for 'severe gun shot wound of left thigh'. On 1 October he was admitted to No. 26 General Hospital at Etaples where he died six days later.
James Drummond Burns, the author of the verse, had been killed in Gallipoli in September 1915. Although Burns' words are quoted relatively frequently one way or another on headstone inscriptions, Burns' own headstone quotes Henry Newbolt's Clifton College:

Qui ante diem periit
Sed miles sed pro patria.

Who died before his time but as a soldier and for his country.

OUR BRAVE AND ONLY CHILD
AT REST

PRIVATE HERBERT DICKINSON QUICK

Herbert Quick volunteered in May 1915 when he was 18 and 10 months old. If they were under 19, soldiers had to have their parents' signed consent to serve abroad. Quick's attestation form notes that he has his father's consent. Quick did not have to enlist, there was never any conscription in Australia; how bitterly his parents must have regretted this when he was killed - their "brave and only child".
Quick served with the 3rd Australian Pioneers. He died in a general hospital in St Sever. There's no indication as to when he was wounded but from 21 October to 12 November 1917 the battalion were out of the line, billeted in the village of Wavrens resting and undergoing training. Prior to 21 October, the battalion had been engaged in building a mule track from Zonnebeke to Seine Road. Work began on 1 October and from then until the 21st between 1 and 12 ORs (other ranks) were wounded every day, except for the 11th, 12th and 17th when there were 'nil' casualties. This is probably when Quick was wounded.

BRITAIN BE PROUD
OF SUCH A SON
DEATHLESS THE FAME
THAT HE HAS WON

SERGEANT HAROLD WILLIAM MASTON

Maston's inscription comes from John Travers Cornwall, a poem by John Oxenham, published in 1917 in his book The Vision Splendid. Oxenham, the pen name of William Arthur Dunkerley, was, as Connie Ruzich has persuasively argued, the most popular poet of the First World War. He was certainly extremely popular with families at home, the next-of-kin who chose the personal inscriptions. Maston's inscription comes from verse 3:

Britain be proud of such a son!
Deathless the fame that he has won
Only a boy, but such a one!
Standing forever to his gun;
There was his duty to be done,
And he did it.

Fourteen-year-old Cornwall won the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Jutland by staying with his gun and awaiting orders whilst the rest of his gun crew were dead and, as Oxenham put it, 'mounded around him'.
Harold William Maston did not win a Victoria Cross but he had been awarded a Military Medal. This proved useful when it came to identifying ten soldiers found in unmarked graves on the old battlefield north of Ypres in March 1920. Three still had their identity discs but Maston could only be identified by his medal ribbon and his sergeant's chevrons. He had been killed in action in the attack on Broodseinde Ridge.
On Friday 7 March 1930 The Singleton Argus reported:

"Mr William Maston, a prominent Sydney businessman, died on Sunday while travelling to France to visit the grave of his son, Sergeant Harold Maston. The funeral took place at Aden on Tuesday."

WEEPING MAY ENDURE
FOR THE NIGHT
BUT JOY COMETH
IN THE MORNING

PRIVATE ALBERT SYDNEY ALEY

Private Aley's inscription was chosen by his brother, Archer, and comes from Psalm 30 verse 5 in the King James' Version:

"For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

The version in the Book of Common Prayer is rather more poetic:

"For his wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye, and in his pleasure is life: heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning"

Is the night referred to a single night or a period of darkness? And is the morning simply the next day or perhaps death, as in the very popular inscription: "Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away?

Albert Ayley was a tailor from Sydney. He enlisted in December 1916 and embarked from Australia a month later. On 4 October 1917 his battalion attacked at Broodseinde Ridge. Aley was wounded. A witness to the Australian Red Cross and Wounded Enquiry Bureau reported:

On Oct. 4th during the attack on a ridge at Ypres Aley was with me on a carrying party. We had gone up and taken our position and were returning for ammunition when I saw Aley walking towards the D/S [Dressing Station].He had his arm bandaged but did not seem to be wounded elsewhere. I afterwards heard he D/W [died of wounds] Oct. 9th. Aley was about 22, delicate looking, 5' 4, and had relatives in England ...

Others agree with this witness as to the nature of Aley's wounds, which seems a bit strange as the report from No. 3 Casualty Clearing Station, Lijssenthoek states that Aley "died of shrapnel wounds on right leg".

"HE WAS A VERAY
PARFIT GENTIL KNIGHT"

SAPPER GUY MARTIN BERRY

Yesterday's inscription introduced Chaucer's knight, today's summarises his qualities - he was a perfect example of masculine nobility and refinement. Such was the lure of medieval chivalry in the late nineteenth century that the families of many soldiers referred to it one way or another in inscriptions - the same reason so many people and institutions chose stained-glass, bronze or stone knights in armour for war memorials. Interestingly, despite the inverted commas and the archaic spelling, this isn't an accurate rendition of the original, which is generally spelt - "He was a verray, gentil, parfit knyght".
Berry had great difficulty enlisting; he was refused twice on the grounds of health - in fact the State Library of Victoria website has the badge he was entitled to wear, which says 'Volunteered for active service - Medically unfit". This was to prevent people like Berry being labeled 'slackers'. Berry's problem was that he had a weak heart as a result of a bout of typhoid fever. However, on 30 October 1916 he was eventually accepted and sailed for England that December. After training to be a signaller - and securing full marks in the qualifying exam - he arrived in France on 8 September 1917. Less than a month later, on 4 October, he received gunshot wounds to his chest and knee and died in a Casualty Clearing Station the same day.
Berry was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne. Their website has more information about his life and death together with some lovely photographs.

ON FAMES ETERNAL CAMPING
GROUND
THEIR SILENT TENTS ARE SPREAD

CAPTAIN CLARENCE SMITH JEFFRIES VC

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

Verse 1 The Bivouac of the Dead
Theodore O'Hara 1820-1867

'Fame's eternal camping ground' is therefore the war cemetery and the 'silent tents' are the dead soldiers' graves. The poem goes on to explain how, now dead, the soldier will be spared all further troubles and nothing will ever diminish 'one ray of glory's light that gilds your deathless tomb'.
Captain Clarence Smith Jeffries 'glory' is assured - he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions on the day he was killed when:

"his company was held up by enemy machine-gun fire from concrete emplacements. Organising a party, he rushed one emplacement, capturing four machine guns and thirty-five prisoners. He then led his company forward under extremely heavy artillery barrage and heavy machine-gun fire to the objective. Later, he again organised a successful attack on a machine-gun emplacement, capturing two machine guns and thirty more prisoners. This gallant officer was killed during the attack, but it was entirely due to his bravery and initiative that the centre of the attack was not held up for a lengthy period. His example had a most inspiring influence."

Jeffries' body was not recovered from the battlefield until September 1920 when it was discovered in an unmarked grave and identified by the three stars of his captain's rank and the initials CSJ on the groundsheet in which he was buried. Clarence Jeffries was his parents' only child.

HE GAVE HIS LIFE
TO BRING IN
A WOUNDED COMRADE
DEEPLY MOURNED

PRIVATE LESLIE CLEGG MCMURDO

Leslie McMurdo was underage when he was killed by a sniper - born in April 1900, he was only seventeen. But he had been determined to fight, so determined that when his attempt to join up in South Africa at the age of 16 failed he stowed away to Australia where he added two years to his age and claimed that he'd already undergone 121 days military training. The Australians accepted him on 21 September 1916, he embarked from Sydney on 23 December 1916, arrived in France via Britain on 4 August 1917, joined the 12th Rifle Company, 31st Battalion Australian Infantry on 24 August and was killed in action one month and two days later in the Battle of Polygon Wood.
Leslie McMurdo was the eldest of his parents' seven children. He was born in Stockton-on-Tees, Durham. The family emigrated to South Africa sometime between 1909 and 1911. His father, Thomas McMurdo, died in November 1914 so it was his mother who was his next of kin. She filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia and interestingly, she backs up her son's story claiming that he was 18 when he died. But the British records don't lie and they show that he was born in the second quarter of 1900. She also states that he came to Australia when he was 16 - that bit is true - "to go farming with Mr F.A. Sheppard ... but I do not know if he would have any other information to give you". I can't tell whether that is true or not but the speed with which he gets into the Australian army would indicate that he didn't have much time to do much farming. It's Mrs McMurdo who tells us of the manner of his death"

"After the Battle at "Polygon Wood", whilst attending a wounded comrade, 200 yards out in "No Man's Land, was shot though heart and left eye."

His body was found in an unmarked grave in March 1920.

'TIS THE LUCK OF THE GAME

LIEUTENANT WALTER JOHN MCMULLIN

My mother lived in Birmingham during the Second World War and the saying among her friends was, if the bomb has got your name on it it's got your name on it and that's all there is to it. In other words - it's the luck of the draw, or as Lieutenant McMullin's father put it, the luck of the game.
Four months before he died McMullin had narrowly escaped death and been awarded a Military Cross. The camouflage over one of his guns caught fire and could have exploded a large pile of ammunition had he and another lieutenant not risked their lives to extinguish the flames. On the 4 October, the opening day of the Battle of Broodseinde Ridge, he was not so lucky.
It's commonplace for letters of condolence to tell the bereaved that their son/husband was 'the best' , but it must mean something when the Brigade HQ War Diary for 4 October 1917 states: "The loss of Lieuts Bennett and McMullin is a big one to the Brigade. These officers have performed excellent service".
McMullin was a grazier from Brooklyn, Upper Rouchel, Aberdeen, New South Wales. He and his brother, Alfred Oswald McMullin, both enlisted on 29 August 1914 and embarked from Australia on 18 October 1914. Alfred survived the war and died in 1960.

TO LOVE, TO HOLD
AND THEN TO PART
IS THE SADDEST STORY -
A HUMAN HEART

DRIVER WILLIAM MCRAE

This is a near quote of a couplet composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834):

To meet, to know, to love - and then to part,
Is the sad tale of many a human heart.

It makes me realise that many inscriptions will have been composed from memory rather than from reference to a book. This would explain why Mrs McRae's inscription is close but not accurate - nor is it an improvement on the original, or a personalising of the original, which sometimes explains the differences.
Mrs McRae had two sons serving at the front, William and Percy. Percy was a witness to William's death, as he informed the Australian Red Cross Enquiry Bureau:

"Driver Wm McRae No. 2531 of the 6th Batty is my brother and I was behind his gun which he was pulling into action at Yeomanry Post, Zillebeke on 31st July 1917 ... when he was killed instantly by a shell. He is buried in a Military Cemetery at Reninghelst, and there is a cross on his grave. I have sent full details to my mother ... "
Sgt P.A. McRae

SURRENDERED SELF TO DUTY
TO HIS OLD HOME
AND ENGLAND HIS COUNTRY

GUNNER HAROLD RALPH SHEPHERD MM

Just in case you thought that all these young men nipped off merrily to do their duty as some contemporary writers would like to have us think, Harold Shepherd's father indicates that his son had made a positive, unselfish decision when he decided to enlist. It's interesting that we have an earlier version of the inscription, which has been crossed out and replaced with the one above. This is the earlier inscription:

He gave of his all to duty
England, his country
And his home

It looks pretty much the same - it could even be said that the original version is slightly more elegant - but can you see that the emphasis is different? In his father's opinion - father signed for the inscription - Harold Shepherd didn't just give his all for duty, he surrendered himself to it, had there been a bit of a struggle? Then there is the change from 'England, his country and his home' to 'his old home and England his country'. Harold Shepherd had emigrated to Australia, or at least was working as a stockman in Australia when he enlisted in March 1915, but England was still 'his country', just in case you thought that he'd only done his duty by England but that Australia was now his country and his home.
I can't see when Harold emigrated to Australia but he left behind in Bexhill-on-Sea a mother and father, and four brothers and sisters, three older than him and one younger. The younger one, James Harper Shepherd, was a territorial soldier and had been serving in the 1st/5th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment since the outbreak of war. James was killed in action on 5 May 1915, two months after Harold had enlisted in Australia.
Shepherd served with the 2nd Brigade Australian Field Artillery. In August 1917 it was 'In the Field' near Ypres. The war diary makes no specific mention of Gunner Shepherd but reports that following an enemy air raid on the guns on 15 August the casualties included "12 ORs wounded, 9 horses killed, 16 wounded".

WHOSE DISTANT FOOTSTEPS ECHO
THROUGH THE CORRIDORS
OF TIME

PRIVATE EVEN THOMAS KENNEDY

Military Hospital
Tidworth
30.11.17

Dear Madam,
In reply to your letter of Nov: 26th re: illness and Death of Pte E.T. Kennedy. He was admitted to this Hospital on 6-7-17, suffering from Bronchitis. On 17.7.17 his diagnosis was changed to Tubercle of Lung. Everything possible was done for him, but he did not improve at all, gradually grew worse, & died on 7-8-17 to our great regret.
He is buried in Tidworth Military Cemetery. Grave no.313 Plot C. The funeral took place on 18-8-17.
The Sister-in-Charge of the ward has written to his relatives.
Yours truly,
G. Rickleton
for E.M.Denne
Matron

This letter to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau would have been in answer to an enquiry from them. The Bureau did the most amazing work and I hope that someday, someone does justice to Vera Deakin, the twenty-four-year-old Australian woman who founded the Bureau in Egypt in October 1915 in order to help people find out what had happened to their relations. Her efforts were not exactly welcomed by the authorities, but she kept it going until the end of the war. The Bureau's digitised files on the Australian War Memorial site provide details about the deaths of thousands of Australian soldiers - like Even Thomas Kennedy.
Kennedy's inscription comes from 'The Day is Done' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1808-1882). There is a fine, elegiac quality to the words, which were chosen by Private Kennedy's mother. She is saying that her son's presence, his footsteps, continue to reverberate around her down through the years, which is not what Longfellow was saying. Longfellow, in search of some words of consolation for his melancholic mood, was rejecting the words of the 'grand masters' and 'bards sublime, whose distant footsteps echo through the corridors of time', in favour of 'some humbler poet, whose songs gushed from his heart'.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

LIVE PURE, SPEAK TRUE
RIGHT WRONG, FOLLOW THE KING

LIEUTENANT HENRY WILLIAM BOWD

Tennyson's words, spoken by Gareth in 'Idylls of the King', summarise the knights code; the King is Christ.
Henry Bowd was a solicitors articled clerk in Inverell New South Wales before he enlisted as private in July 1915. Sent to Egypt in March 1916 - arriving in June - he began aerial observation instruction in August before qualifying as a pilot in April 1917.
He was killed near Heliopolis when test flying a modified Martinsyde G.102 A 1607. At a height of 4000 ft the plane seemed to stall and began to dive. Bowd seemed to be successfully pulling it out of the dive when it began to break up, caught fire, broke into pieces and crashed.
His father chose his inscription.

THE PIPERS PLAYED
THE GATHERING OF THE CLANS

PRIVATE ARCHIE STUART THOM

Born in Crieff, Perthshire, Archie Stuart Thom had only been in Australia for three years before he enlisted and returned to Britain as a member of the 47th Battalion Australian Infantry. His wife chose his inscription, hinting at his continuing loyalty to the land of his birth.
The Gathering of the Clans is a traditional piece of music for bagpipes, it is also a term for an event where members of various clans gather, and it's the title of a poem by Sir Walter Scott, a call to arms.

Awake on your hills, on your islands awake,
Brave sons of the mountain, the firth, and the lake!
'Tis the bugle - but not for the chase or the call,
'Tis the pibroch's* shrill summons - but not to the hall.
'Tis the summons of heroes for conquest or death,
When the banners are blazing on mountain and heath;
They call to the dirk, the claymore, and the targe,
To the march, and the muster, the line, and the charge.

The pibroch's, the piper's, summons "to the march, and the muster, the line, and the charge".
Thom was killed in the assault on Passchendaele Ridge. According to the war diary, "Weather conditions horrible & going very slow. Men bogged, country in a very bad state & much churned by shell fire. No cover for men all ranks cheery". At 5.45 on the morning of the 12th, "enemy heavily shelled Battn H.Qrs shell fire killing 24 and wounding 10 men ... Nearly all signallers, runners & scouts casualties ... many valuable lives lost, that will be hard to replace".

TRANSPLANTED
HUMAN WORTH WILL BLOOM
TO PROFIT OTHERWHERE

PRIVATE FREDERICK MILLER

This is yet more evidence of the popularity of Tennyson's poetry in headstone inscriptions. Frederick Miller's comes from In Memoriam, the poem Tennyson wrote following the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam. Hallam was only 22, yet Tennyson was able to believe that Hallam's youthful life wasn't wasted by his death since his potential would be fulfilled in the next life.

Nor blame I death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.

The only thing Tennyson's blamed death for was that:

He puts our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.

An enquiry by Miller's family to the Australian Red Cross in October 1918 elicited the following witness statement:

"This man was killed by my side on the 5th October 1917 and was buried by myself and another man on the morning of the 6th October 1917. He was buried in the field. It was impossible to get his body back to a soldiers cemetery as the shelling was very heavy and the cemetery was so far away. This man was a short dark man."

Another witness told the Red Cross:

"Miller was my mate. This grave position has been smashed up since, as the Huns came through, it was on the right of Zonnebeke. Broodseinde road (from Zonnebeke) just below Daisy Wood."

Miller was 'buried in the field'. It was not until December 1924 that his body was discovered in an unmarked grave, identified by his clothing and his discs. This was three years after the Graves Registration Unit had stopped scouring the battlefields for bodies and yet plenty continued - and continue - to turn up.

"SWEET IT IS TO HAVE DONE
THE THING ONE OUGHT"
TENNYSON

PRIVATE WILLIAM JOHN WILSON

Private Wilson's inscription comes from Tennyson's The Princess, published in 1847, which addresses the idea of the education of women. Whilst the context of the poem throws little light on Wilson's inscription the sentiment is very pertinent. Many men would have recognised this feeling of satisfaction in knowing that you were doing your duty. Lavinia Talbot recognised it in her son Gilbert's army career, writing in the memoir she compiled:

"I think the definite, and, until the war was over, the unquestioned rightness of his serving in the army produced a feeling of quiet and satisfaction which made his soldier's life very happy."

Talbot was killed in July 1915. William John Wilson's life was very different from Gilbert Talbot's. Talbot was the son of the Bishop of Winchester, educated at Winchester and Oxford and related to some of the grandest families in England. Wilson was a farmer from Warbrook in Western Australia whose education had been gained by correspondence course, yet both men took satisfaction from knowing that they were doing "the thing one ought".
Wilson, who served with the 48th Battalion Australian Infantry, died of wounds received in the savage fighting at Pozieres when the War Diary recorded:

"The Battalion casualties 5th to 7th [August] inclusive were: 6 officers killed ... , 14 officers wounded ... 98 other ranks killed, 404 other ranks wounded, 76 others ranks missing."

READY WHEN CALLED

PRIVATE ARCHIBALD RICHMOND MIDDLETON

Private Middleton enlisted in October 1915; he answered the 'call to arms'. But I don't think that this is the 'call' his father was referring to when he chose his son's inscription. The call Archibald Middleton answered was God's. Christians are constantly warned that they should be prepared to meet their God, in other words that they should always live godly lives because they never know when they will be called to meet their maker - "ye know neither the day nor the hour". Middleton, a Presbyterian, was, according to his father, ready when God called him.
Middleton served with the 31st Battalion Australian Infantry. He had embarked from Australia in March 1916 and was killed six weeks before the war ended. According to a witness:

"He was of 31st Battalion, A.2. 5ft 4, medium and 30. Came from New South Wales. Beyond Bellecourt near the railway line on September 29th 1918 at 10. a.m. we were resting in shelters during the attack when Middleton was wounded by a shell. He was carried out by two prisoners of war. He was conscious when I last saw him."

Another witness reported, "He died at a field D/S about two miles back from Bellicourt". The Officer Commanding 20th Casualty Clearing Station confirmed, "Admitted 20th Casualty Clearing Station 30.9.18. Died 1.10.18. Wounds: - shell wounds chest and left leg".

A CAREER SO BRILLIANT
LAID ASIDE
FOR THE CALL TO ARMS
LOVED BY ALL

CAPTAIN FRANCIS JOHN PIGGOTT

Francis John Piggott was working in marine insurance before he joined up in February 1916. After several months training in both Australia and England, he arrived in France in November 1916 to serve with the 36th Battalion Australian Infantry. Australia's digitised records are phenomenal and one site, the Harrower Collection, documents every single aspect of Piggott's military career together with the bureaucracy surrounding his death.
Piggott was killed on the third day of the Battle of Messines. The Battalion War Diary records the action but doesn't mention his death:

10/6/17: At 3 a.m. threw out Advance Posts on Ulster Avenue and Ulster Drive to line "O" and Tilleui Farm ... At 5 p.m.received orders to storm La Potterie Farm System of trenches. Zero time 11 p.m. Organised 6 Officers and 200 men who carried the works killing 80 Boche and sending back 5 prisoners.

An enquiry by his mother to the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau elicited the information that:

Captain F.J. Piggott of C. Coy. of the 36th Battn was killed on the night of the 10th June just prior to the attack at La Potteril (sic) Farm. He and four others were killed instantly by a large shell which fell into the trench. His body was brought back to the Casualty Clearing Station and handed over for burial.

Other witnesses weren't quite so sure about the 'killed instantly'; one reported that he had been "badly wounded through the lung at Messines and died at the dressing station at Charing Cross".

BETTER A WOODEN CROSS
THAN BE ONE
WHO COULD HAVE GONE
AND DID NOT

SAPPER FREDERICK WILLIAM JEEVES

Sapper Jeeves' wife chose his inscription. She took the words from a letter he had written from the front, which she quoted when she filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia:

"I would rather lie with a little wooden cross above my head, than be one of those who could have gone and did not."

The words inspired his brother-in-law, Clarence Herbert Cazaly, to write 'In Memoriam Sapper Frederick Jeeves'. The poem, published in the Lilydale Express on 25 October 1918, begins with the same sentiment:

"I would rather lie," he said,
"With wooden cross above my head,
Than be one who could have gone
And who did not." By the Somme
In a soldier's grave he lies,
Dust of France upon his eyes,
Robe of honour on his heart;
And in token of his part,
A wooden cross above his head,
Calm amid the Austral dead,
By the waters of the Somme,
On the road to Amiens.

Jeeves, a motor mechanic and garage proprietor from Croydon, Lilydale, Victoria, joined up on 1 February 1916 and embarked for Europe on 28 July that year. His inscription has to be seen against the background of Australian resistance to the introduction of conscription. He served with the 6th Field Company Australian Engineers and was killed on 1 August 1918, as reported in the War Diary:

No.4 Section, while building S.P. Shelters for 22nd Battalion in railway cutting at O.28.c.3.8. came in for a heavy "area shoot", Sapper F.W.Jeeves being killed and Sapper H.Q. Boutchard wounded.

Jeeve's platoon commander, Lieutenant Carleton, described him as, "Absolutely one of the very best".

THEN THE GODS PITIED HIM
AND TOOK HIM TO THEIR MIDST

PRIVATE ARTHUR PROUT

Who dies in youth and vigour dies the best,
Struck thro' with wounds, all honest on the breast
Homer Iliad Bk viii, 1.371

No one knows but that death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man
Plato 'Apologia of Socrates sec. 29

Prout's inscription makes sense if you take the view that to die in youth is to die the best, if death may be the greatest of blessings. It follows on from yesterday's inscription, 'Whom the gods love dies young', and it informs that very popular verse of Laurence Binyon's, now regularly recited at Remembrance Day services:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Binyon probably meant the polar opposite from the way the verse is taken today - that tragically those who died in the war never had the opportunity to grow old. To Binyon, and to others, those who died young would be young forever unlike the survivors who would end up 'sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything' (As You Like It Act II. Sc. viii, Shakespeare).
Arthur Prout was 22 when he died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station on the Somme. His mother, Mrs Jessie Prout, requested information from the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau, which told her:

"This man was admitted to a dressing station administered by this Field Ambulance on the Bray Corbie Road (map reference approximately Sheet. 62D.J.24.b.) suffering from Bullet wound skull - fracture, and died a few minutes after admission. He was buried by an Army Chaplain close by at a spot known as Cemetery Copse, which has since been made an English Cemetery.
[O.C. 2/3rd H.C. Field Amb. R.A.M.C. B.E.F.]

FOR LIBERTY

LIEUTENANT HORACE LISLE RINTEL

How can the war have been a struggle for Liberty? Because it was a struggle between the democracies and military autocracy, at least this is how the Allies saw it. Liberty was particularly the cause the United States claimed for their participation in the war so that those who contributed money to the war effort bought Liberty Bonds - Beat back the Hun with Liberty Bonds - and one of their popular history's of the war was titled, 'The World War for Liberty'. But others were allowed to fight for Liberty too. One of the most popular British poems of the war, by the poet John Oxenham, assured the bereaved that their dead had:

"died the noblest death a man may die,
Fighting for God, and Right, and Liberty".

By way of explanation, Oxenham wrote:

"War is red horror. But, better war than the utter crushing-out of liberty and civilisation under the heel of Prussian or any other militarism."

Rintel, a school teacher at Ballarat College, enlisted in July 1915. He embarked from Australia on 23 November 1916, six days after he'd married Gwendolyn Morey, a teacher at Fairlight Girls Grammar School in East St Kilda. He served with the 8th Battalion Australian Infantry and was killed on 20 September 1917 in an attack on the German lines near Zillebeke. The 8th Battalion's war diary gives the details of the attack. Rintel was "killed instantaneously by a piece of shell in the advance".
Many websites say that Rintel 'secretly' married Gwendolyn Morey. If he did, by the end of the war the family knew of her. Rintel's father chose his son's headstone inscription and received his Victory Medal and Memorial Plaque, but Gwendolyn had his British War Medal, Memorial Scroll and the pamphlet, 'Where the Australians Rest' the booklet that was given to the next-of-kin of all those who died on active service abroad. By 1920 she was the headmistress of Fairlight. She appears never to have remarried and to have died aged 72 in 1967.
It's strange the things you can find out about people: Horace Rintel, the grandson of Moses Rintel, who is commemorated in the Australian Jewry Roll of Honour, is buried under a headstone inscribed with a cross. His father did not request the star of David as he was perfectly within his rights to do.

FATHER AND MOTHER
WEEP NOT FOR ME
NOR WISH ME BACK AGAIN

DRIVER JAMES BUSHBY

The State Library of Western Australia has a collection of photographs entitled the Bushby Collection of Rosedale Farm, Cuballing, Western Australia. This is Driver James Bushby's family. James Bushby Senior arrived in Australia in 1885. His wife, Honour, came the following year with with their two children: Annie and her younger brother James Junior. In November 2015 the Cuby News, which covers the communities of Cuballing, Popanyinning and Yornaning, published an article by Stephen Bowes on the family and the sons who went to war.
Jim enlisted on 24 June 1915 at the height of the Gallipoli campaign, embarking from Australia on 18 November. The transport arrived in Suez in December by which time the Gallipoli Campaign was winding down. Bushby joined the 54th Battery Australian Infantry and went with them to France, arriving in June 1916. By the summer of 1917 the Battery were in Flanders. Bushby was killed on 12 August. His death is not mentioned by name in the war diary but it does record two soldiers killed that day.
Two other brothers also served, Fred was badly wounded in the chest in September 1917. After being hospitalised in England, he eventually returned to the front but in September 1918 went absent without leave. He was arrested five days after the war ended and sentenced to seven years penal servitude. This was suspended in April 1919 after he had spent some months working for the AIF Graves Detachment. The other brother, Alf, was also wounded and had a leg amputated.
Mrs Bushby chose her son's inscription, presumably quoting her son's sentiments if not his actual words: Father and mother weep not for me nor wish me back again.

THE LARKS YE HEARD
THEY SING OF THE CAUSE
WHICH MADE THEE DIE

PRIVATE HOWARD OTIS IRISH

This inscription is based on John McCrae's incredibly popular poem, In Flanders' Fields. The poem was so popular that there were many, many responses to it: poems that promised to keep the torch held high, promised not to break faith with those who died. This inscription comes from one such poem, which was apparently printed on a highly illuminated card by a New York publishing house:

Rest in peace, ye Flanders's dead,
The poppies still blow overhead,
The larks ye heard, still singing fly,
They sing of the cause which made thee die.

And they are heard far down below,
Our fight is ended with the foe.
The fight for right, which ye begun
And which ye died for, we have won,
Rest in peace.

There is little trace of the poem now, in fact, had it not been quoted in The Sunny Side of Grub Street, an essay by Christopher Morley that appeared in Mince Pie, a collection of his writings, it would probably have disappeared completely. Morley was not impressed by either the poem or its sentiments declaring that, "The man who wrote that ought to be the first man mobilized for the next war". However, that's obviously not how Private Irish's American parents saw it.
Howard Otis Irish was born in Barberton, Ohio in 1893. When he was 20 he and his parents went to Australia. Howard enlisted in March 1916, embarked from Australia in June and was killed in the trenches in December.

A FLOWER OF THE FOREST
IS WEEDED AWAY

PRIVATE PETER CROSSAN

The words are an English version of an old Scottish lament. The tune was originally composed for the bagpipes and tradition has it that it is a lament for the flower of Scotland, the 10,000 men who were killed at the battle of Flodden in 1513. There are two sets of lyrics that accompany the song. Jean Eliot's words, for the relevant verse, read:

We'll hae nae mair lilting at the yowe-milking,
Women and bairns are dowie and wae.
Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning,
The flowers of the forest are all wede away.

There's another popular version by Alison Cockburn:

O fickle fortune! why this cruel sporting?
Why thus perplex us poor sons of a day?
Thy frowns cannot fear me, thy smile cannot cheer me,
Since the flowers of the forest are a' wede away.

Peter Crossan was born in Scotland, in Carluke, Lanarkshire. He emigrated to Australia with his parents when he was 13. He enlisted in April 1917. Rather poignantly, he gives his age on his attestation form as 18, and beside this there are brackets containing the words, 'parent's consent'. All soldiers had to be 19 before they could go on active service - unless they had their parents' permission. Crossan's mother, a widow, had given her consent. Peter's brother, William, who also served in the Australian army, chose his inscription.

I've seen the forest adorn'd of the foremost,
With flowers of the fairest, both pleasant and gay;
Full sweet was their blooming, their scent the air perfuming,
But now they are wither'd and a' wede away.

OH THAT WE COULD
HAVE CLASPED HIS HAND
& SOOTHED HIS PARTING HOURS

SERGEANT GEORGE LOWBRIDGE

As if the death of your son was not enough grief, the fact that you had not been at his side when he died, had not been able to say goodbye, hold his hand or soothe his brow, added another layer of sorrow. The nineteenth century had idealised the 'good death': the loved one lying surrounded by their family who had gathered to say goodbye, hear their last words, comfort them. For George Lowbridge's parents, it was unbearable to think of him dying alone.
Lowbridge, a bootmaker from Newcastle, New South Wales, had been at war since he left Australia in November 1915. Travelling across France from Marseilles in the spring of 1916 he told his parents how lovely and fresh the air was after Egypt, how like home. But he was struck by the general air of sadness in all the towns and villages:

"It would do some of our Australian boys good to come here and learn a lesson - the slackers I mean. All that are left are the old men and women. Their sons have all gone to war."

By October 1917, Lowbridge was a sergeant who had been recommended for a Military Medal for "conspicuous bravery" at Polygon Wood less than a month before he was killed. There are no details of his death but the war diary records:

"22nd October Support line Anzac Ridge. Officers 40, ORs 811. Fairly heavy shelling all day. Carrying party supplied, heavy casualties to our NCOs during the day. 2 ORs killed in action, 9 ORs wounded, 2 evacuated sick."

Among the dead were two sergeants, George Lowbridge and Eustace King, and Corporal David Price. Price and Lowbridge enlisted in Newcastle on the same day - 18 July 1915 - embarked from Australia in the same ship on the same day - 9 November 1915 - and were killed in action on the same day. Sometime later, in the In Memoriam column of the local Newcastle newspaper, the following announcement appeared:

"In loving memory of our dear comrades, Sergeant George Lowbridge and Corporal D. Price, killed in action October 22, 1917 - Inserted by their comrades, F.W. Keen, F. Field and D.T. Brewster."

LEAVING A WIDOW
AND THREE CHILDREN
HIS DUTY DONE

PRIVATE HAROLD ST CLAIR HENSTRIDGE

Henstridge's three children, Kevin, Betty and Bobbie, were aged 6, 5 and 2 at the time of their father's death. Interestingly, because
his whole service file has been digitised, we can see that subsequently his widow, Violet, received a fortnightly pension of £2, Kevin 20 shillings, Betty 15 shillings and Bobbie 10 shillings.
Henstridge, who described himself at his attestation as an advertisement writer, enlisted on 14 August 1915, trained as a machine gunner and served with the 3rd Company Australian Machine Gun Corps in France and Flanders. He was killed by a shell on 20 September 1917, the witnesses in his Red Cross Wounded and Missing file giving slightly contradictory accounts as to exactly what happened. The most lurid describes how they were advancing in open formation at Polygon Wood when a shell came over and hit him:

"It was about midnight ... when it happened ... Henstridge was the only one hit. We looked for him and found pieces of fresh flesh ... I feel sure the shell wiped him out ...".

Others also say that he was blown to pieces but some say that they saw his body and helped to bury him. I've always wondered how much detail the Red Cross passed on to the next-of-kin; who would want to know about finding pieces of their son's or husband's 'fresh flesh'? However, the letter the Red Cross wrote Mrs Henstridge is in this file and I can see that they say nothing about Henstridge being blown to pieces and only mention that he was killed and probably buried near when he died.
Regardless of the conflicting reports, this does appear to have been what happened. In March 1919, Henstridge's body was discovered at map reference J.8.c.5.0. Although there was no cross on the grave, Henstridge did have his identity disc, which meant that he could be buried under a named headstone. The identity disc was despatched to Mrs Henstridge on 9 June 1920.

SOMEONE'S KISS
ON HIS FOREHEAD LAY
& HOPED TO SEE HIM
ONCE AGAIN

PRIVATE LESLIE CYRIL HOGAN

Leslie Hogan's father chose his inscription; was it his father's kiss that lay on Hogan's forehead, or his mother's, or perhaps a girlfriend's? A forehead kiss is a chaste kiss so perhaps it was his mother's. Girlfriends make very few appearances in inscriptions, but then at that time girlfriends had no status, until a couple became engaged they were simply friends.
Hogan was a telegraph messenger from Grong Grong, New South Wales, where he had been born and brought up. He enlisted in December 1915 and was 18 and 10 months when he left Australia for France the following April. Hospitalised in England with frost bite in his feet in February 1917, he only returned to the Front at the end of August. He was killed two weeks later.
According to his Red Cross file, on 17 September Hogan was in Zouave trench not far from the Menin Road, near Hooge Dump.

"At about 7 pm Fritz started shelling and the second shell he put over landed right amongst a group of a dozen soldiers, including Hogan and another soldier named J.W.King (No. 6036) both them were killed and three others wounded. Informant was about 5 yards away at that time and was covered with the dust from the shell. He was dug out immediately and found to be dead. The following morning these two men, together with four others, who had been previously killed, were buried in one grave about 30 yards away from the line."

WHEN ALIVE THEY WOULD NOT
TAKE YOUR PLACE
THEY CANNOT HAVE IT NOW
MY SON

PRIVATE WALTER JOHN SAYERS

This seemed a curious epitaph until I realised that it must refer to the deep divisions created in Australian society over the question of whether or not the Government should introduce conscription.
By early 1916 voluntary enlistment was drying up, yet Australia needed to provide reinforcements at the rate of 5,500 men a month in order to maintain its overseas forces at an operational level. On 28 October 1916 the Government held a referendum on the matter and was defeated: 1,087,557 in favour and 1,160,033 against.
In 1917 Britain asked Australia to raise another division for active service overseas. This meant it would now have to raise 7,000 men a month. On 20 December 1917 the Government held a second referendum and this time it was defeated 1,015,159 in favour and 1,181,747 against. The question went away but the passions raised had been deeply divisive both socially and politically.
Walter John Sayers was a farmer in Wycheproof, a very small farming community in north-western Victoria where he had been captain of the local rifle club. He enlisted on 17 August 1916 aged 33. This would suggest that he had responded to the call for more volunteers, having not done so originally. He embarked from Melbourne on 2 October 1916 with the 21st Reinforcements for the 7th Australian Infantry. He trained as a Lewis gunner and was killed in action on 4 October 1917 in the Australian attack on Broodseinde Ridge.
The 7th Infantry Battalion's digitised war diary provides every detail of the attack, from which I will quote just the following paragraph from the narrative of operations:

"At 0530 enemy put down on the Bn. assembly position a heavy barrage of all calibres causing many casualties. It was impossible to move the Bn. to avoid the barrage. The Bn. endured the terrific barrage with great steadiness and courage and when our barrage opened at 0600 the Bn. rose and quietly moved forward through the enemy barrage to the attack."

At 1200 noon on 5 October the battalion sent a message to Brigade headquarters with particulars of the estimated casualties: Officers - killed 1, wounded 12. Other ranks killed 50, wounded 150, missing 100. Sayers, initially among the missing, was pronounced dead on 22 October. His body was not found and buried until September 1919.
Private Sayer's widowed mother chose his inscription. "When alive they would not take your place" is a rebuke to those who opposed conscription and those wouldn't volunteer. "They cannot have it now my son" suggests her belief in the fact that her son, as a result of his sacrifice, now has an assured place in heaven.

CHA TILL GU BRATH
GU LA NA CRUINNE

PRIVATE ALEXANDER MCCRIMMON

The Gaelic translates as 'he will not return until the great day of doom and burning', the Last Day, the Day of Judgement . You would be forgiven for assuming that this was a quote from a hymn, but it isn't. The lines come from the chorus of MacCrimmon's Lament, a lament for a piper from the Isle of Skye killed in the 1745 Rebellion:

No more, no more, no more returning,
In peace nor in war is he returning;
Till dawns the great day of doom and burning,
MacCrimmon is home no more returning.

Alexander McCrimmon came from Skye; he was born there in 1871. This is not to say that he was related to the MacCrimmons of the lament who for three hundred years, 1500 to 1800, had been hereditary pipers to the Clan MacLeod. But nor is there anything to say he wasn't. His father, Donald, was a shepherd. In the 1891 census, Alexander was a groom in Snizort; in 1901 a fisherman in Minginish. In 1910, at the age of 39, he left Skye and emigrated to Australia where he worked as a station hand.
McCrimmon enlisted on 15 January 1917, embarking for Britain on 10 February with the reinforcements for the 1st Battalion Australian Infantry. By 31 May he was in France. On 16 September the battalion went into the trenches at Hooge; McCrimmon was killed that day. The war diary gives a detailed description of the day's activities, remarking on the intermittent shelling but not mentioning any casualties.
One of McCrimmon's brothers, also living in Australia, chose his inscription, nor was he the only Scottish soldier to have it as his epitaph. It was a haunting phrase for the Scots, even without any Skye or MacCrimmon connections, and one that became even better known as a result of a poem by Ewart Alan Mackintosh, who was killed in action in November 1917, 'Cha Till Maccruimein'. This is the last verse:

And there in the front of the men were marching
With feet that made no mark,
The old grey ghosts of the ancient fighters
Come back again from the dark;
And in front of them all MacCrimmon piping
A weary tune and sore,
"On gathering day, for ever and ever,
MacCrimmon comes no more".

GIVEN BY A LOVING FATHER
AND MOTHER
WITH PROUD BUT ACHING HEARTS

GUNNER FRANCIS JOSEPH GELL

Who else 'gave' their son? It was God:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Without any intended blasphemy, many parents believed that their sons had made a similar sacrifice to God's son - their sons too had died to save the world. It was an idea confirmed in that wonderful old Remembrance Day hymn, 'O Valiant hearts':

These were His servants, in His steps they trod,
Following through death the martyred Son of God:
Victor, He Rose; victorious too shall rise
They who have drunk His cup of sacrifice.

And this is why although Mr and Mrs Gell's hearts were aching they could feel proud; they too had 'given' their son in a noble cause.

Francis Gell was a sign writer and printer from Geelong in Victoria. He enlisted in December 1915 and left Australia for Europe in April 1916. He served with the 55th Battery of the Australian 36th Heavy Artillery Brigade, which had just taken delivery of its brand-new 9.2-inch howitzers. These were the seriously big guns. They had a working crew of fourteen and could fire their 132 kilogram shells almost 10 kilometres. Normally well behind the lines, the guns were occasionally moved forward, when they became very vulnerable should the German guns get their range. This is what happened the day Gell was killed, the opening day of the Battle of Broodseinde.
Gell's mother appealed to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau for information. All the witnesses were agreed that the gun had received a direct hit, some were specific about the casualties - fourteen killed and seventeen wounded. The witnesses were again united about Gell's fate, but less so about the details: "I saw him afterwards; he was just recognisable"; "There were several bodies unrecognisable, and Gell was amongst them".

IT IS MEN
OF MY AGE AND SINGLE
WHO ARE EXPECTED
TO DO THEIR DUTY

PRIVATE WILLIAM HENRY RICKARD

William Rickard's father chose his inscription: the words have to have been his son's. Rickard volunteered at Blackboy Camp, Western Australia in April 1916; he was 24. He served with the 24th Battalion Australian Infantry, originally raised in Blackboy in April 1915. Rickard went out with the 16th reinforcements.
By 1916 Australian recruitment was beginning to dry up, so much so that in October 1916 the Government tried but failed to introduce conscription - it lost the referendum 49%-51%. Rickard had not volunteered initially but you can see how his mind was working by April 1916.
He arrived in France on 22 December 1916 and was wounded in the thigh three months later. Hospitalised in England, he rejoined his battalion in August 1917. The battalion took part in the attack on Broodseinde Ridge on 4 October 1917 where Rickard was again wounded. He died the same day at No. 10 Casualty Clearing Station, Lijssenthoek of 'shrapnel wounds on the head'.
Rickard, an engine driver from Fremantle, Western Australia, was his parents only son.

NO VOICE
SAVE AN ECHO REPEATING
HE COMETH NOT BACK AGAIN
L. GORDON

LIEUTENANT HENRY ERIC HAMMEL

Henry Hammel's mother quotes from a rather beautiful poem by a British born, Australian poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870). In the poem, Thora's Song, two lovers part before the autumn ploughing, a whole a year passes and the harvest is ready to be gathered in, but the lover does not return. The inscription comes from the last verse:

Waiting and watching ever,
Longing and lingering yet,
Leaves rustle and corn stalks quiver,
Winds murmur and waters fret;
No answer they bring, no greeting,
No speech save that sad refrain,
Nor voice, save an echo repeating -
He cometh not back again.

An assayer and metallurgist in civilian life, Hammel was wounded in action at Borre in May 1918. A letter to the Secretary of the Information Bureau, Australian Red Cross Society, from No. 14 General Hospital in Wimereaux gives the details of his death.

"Lieut H.E. Hammel 2 Field Co Australian Engs: was admitted to this hospital on the 7th May 1918, suffering from shell wounds in legs and chest (severe). He was placed on dangerously ill list on 15/5/18 and death took place on the 22nd May at 7.20 pm. He was buried in the Boulogne Cemetery on 24th May and his grave is no. 6777."

MY FIRST PRIDE
MY FIRST JOY
MY BRAVE SOLDIER BOY

PRIVATE HEREWARD WILLIAM RAY

Hereward Ray was his mother's eldest child - 'her first pride, her first joy'. He was also 'her brave soldier boy'. I can't help hearing the words of a popular, American anti-war song, written in 1915, in her description of her son. And if this echo is intentional then she's rebuking the song-writers, not agreeing with them. This is the chorus of the song:

I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It's time to lay the sword and gun away.
There'd be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."

To his mother, Hereward Ray was not only her pride and joy but a brave soldier too. The Ray family was committed to the war. There was no conscription in Australia but Hereward Ray's stepfather and brother both served in it, as did his mother's brother, Hector Archibald Maclean, who was killed in action aged 47, and two of his cousins. One cousin was killed and the other, invalided home, died of his wounds in Australia.

Hereward Ray enlisted in March 1915 and served with the 22nd Australian Infantry, which embarked from Australia in May. It went to Gallipoli where it remained until the evacuation that December. Then it moved to France and took part in the Battle of the Somme at Pozieres. Early in 1917 it went to Flanders. Ray was killed in the trenches on 18 September 1917. A witness related how he and Sergeant Kelly had both died of head injuries having been hit by a shell at Jabber Trench, Westhoek".

SONG SINKS INTO SILENCE
THE STORY IS TOLD

SAPPER HAROLD MILNE

The book is completed,
And closed, like the day;
And the hand that has written it
Lays it away.
Dim grows its fancies;
Forgotten they lie;
Like coals in the ashes,
They darken and die.
Song sinks into silence,
The story is told,
The windows are darkened,
The hearth-stone is cold.
Darker and darker
The black shadows fall;
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all.

Harold Milne's inscription comes from this, the second verse of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem 'Curfew'. His mother signed the form confirming the choice.
Milne, born in Galashiels in Scotland, emigrated to Australia in 1907 when he was 24. He enlisted in September 1915 and served with the 14th Field Company Australian Engineers. He was killed in action on 25 October. The Company's war diary for October 1917 gives precise details of all the work the Company carried out on its sector of the line: from the Leinster Road to the Hanebeek River. But it doesn't mention any casualties until the end of the month when it lists the fact that, between 16 September and 31 October, 18 members of the Company were killed, 2 died of wounds, 31 were wounded and 1 gassed.

GREEN SOD ABOVE
BLOW LIGHT, BLOW LIGHT
GOOD NIGHT DEAR, GOOD NIGHT

PRIVATE SIDNEY ROLAND JENKINS

Mark Twain used a similar inscription to this on his daughter's headstone, which led people to assume that he had written it. He hadn't, but he had adapted it from 'Annette', a poem by Robert Richardson. Richardson's 'Annette' concludes:

Warm summer sun, shine friendly here.
Warm western wind, blow kindly here;
Green sod above, rest light, rest light,
Good-night, Annette!
Sweetheart, good-night!

The inscription on Twains daughter's headstone reads:

Warm summer sun, shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind blow softly here,
Green sod above lie light, lie light -
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.

Private Jenkins' father adapted it differently and referred to the wind rather than to the sun:

Green sod above
Blow light, blow light
Good night dear, good night

Jenkins, in civilian life a railway porter from Gulargambone, N.S.W., enlisted on 16 October 1915 and embarked from Sydney on 5 June 1916 with the 13th reinforcements for the 18th Battalion Australian Infantry. Wounded on 15 April 1917, he was back in action by 28 August. He then died of wounds at No. 10 Casualty Clearing Station on 22 September 1917.
The Battalion War Dairy records that on the 20 September it attacked at Bellewaarde Ridge with 200 casualties among the soldiers. After heavy shelling on the 21st, it was relieved the next day; the Diary commentating: "Casualties during the relief were slight. Casualties Lieut W.S. Moors (wounded) O. Ranks estimated around 60".
A report in the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau Files states baldly: "Private Jenkins died 22.9.17 from G.S.W. (gun shot wound) compound fracture R.Leg and Wd R. Hand. He was buried at Lijssenthoek Cemetery Plot 22. No. H 14B."

"I'M ALL RIGHT MOTHER
CHEERIO"

LIEUTENANT HAROLD ROWLAND HILL

What would you say to your mother as you signed off the letter you were writing to her just before you went up into the front line? You'd tell her that you were OK. The inscription is in quotation marks, surely the words are therefore Hill's, and given the fact that they have been used for his inscription, they must be something like the last words he wrote to her.
On the night of the 1st/2nd October the Battalion arrived at Esplanade Saps, Zonneke. Its effective strength was was 35 officers and 989 other ranks. They spent the 3rd, 'In Front Line' and then on the night of the 3rd/4th the War Dairy records:

"Jumping off tape was laid by midnight along frontage and along Coy. flanks. The Battalion was on same by 4.30am on 4th. At zero the Bn. closed up to within 50 yards of barrage and fought its way to the objective where it consolidated."

On the 7th October the battalion moved back into the support lines. Their casualties for this period were two officers and 38 other ranks killed, 10 officers and 185 other ranks wounded and 16 other ranks missing.

Witnesses recorded in the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau files inform us of Hill's fate:

"Lieutenant Hill was killed before the hopover just behind Zonnebeke, near Zonnebeke Church. He was with Brigade Sig. at the time in charge of 25th Hd. Qrts. Sig."

"He led the 7th Bde. Signallers advance party over the top, near Zonnebeke about 6.30 am on Oct. 4/17. I was quite close to him when he was severely wounded during the heavy barrage, and was taken by S/Bs to the Menin Road Hospital near the Comforts Fund."

"I helped to bandage Lt. Hill. He was so badly wounded in the head and hit almost allover his body too, that he could not have lived more than an hour if that. Afterwards I heard that he had lived nearly two hours."

"Mr Hill went over the morning of the 4th October with a party of Bde. Sigs and we, the Battn Sigs were not with him at the time he was hit. But from particulars I gathered from one of our A.M.C. men I think he passed through the battalion Dressing Station unconscious but still alive, and died on the stretcher on the way to the A.D.S."

I COULD NOT SPEAK
THAT LAST GOOD-BYE
BUT KISSED HIM O'ER AND O'ER

PRIVATE WILLIAM THORN CARR

William Carr's father describes the scene so vividly that it is really quite affecting. It's a scene that must have been repeated in households all over the world - the saying good-bye to your son who was going off to fight. And Carr was an Australian, which meant that he would never be able to come home on leave
William Carr enlisted on 25 January 1916 and sailed for Europe from Brisbane on 16 August the same year. He served with the 52nd Battalion Australian Infantry made up of veterans from Gallipoli and new recruits, like Carr, fresh from Australia. The autumn and winter of 1916 were spent on the Somme and then early in 1917 the battalion transferred to the Ypres sector. Involved in the the battles of Messines Ridge, Polygon Wood and 1st Passchendaele, Carr was killed as the battalion transferred out of the line to a rest area at Ottawa Camp. The 15th to the 19th October had been spent in the trenches at Broodseinde Ridge, on 20th the Battalion was resting and 'cleaning up' in Ypres and then on 21st it moved out of the town:

52nd Battalion Australian Infantry War Diary 21st October:
"Moved from Infantry Barracks, Ypres to Ouderdum Area - route march - vide Operation Order in appendix. (Casualties - 6 other ranks killed, 32 other ranks wounded, 1 other rank previously reported Missing - reported Killed in addition to those shown on 19th inst.) Lieut A.M. Playfair wounded. Casualties occurred through shell fire as Battalion was leaving Ypres (1 p.m.) 7 other ranks killed, 3 other ranks wounded, on 21st October."

The soldiers might have been out of the direct front line but Ypres was not far from it and the German guns pounded the town incessantly. They knew where the roads were and had their range, which made the whole environs very dangerous.

NO BURDENS YONDER
ALL SORROW PAST
NO BURDENS YONDER
HOME AT LAST

SAPPER CECIL JOHN OSBORN

Sapper Osborn's inscription comes from a hymn written by Ada Habershon at the beginning of the twentieth century. The hymn itself is based on verse 4 of the Book of Revelations Chapter 21:

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

The hymn itself welcomes the fact that at death everyone will lay down their burdens, there will be no testing, no toiling, no weariness, no disappointments, no distress, no partings, no pain, no sickness and no weeping. Osborn's inscription forms the chorus.
Osborn, a carpenter, enlisted on 14 February 1916. He arrived in France on 27 January 1917 and was killed on 19 October 1917. His mother, filling in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia, tells us what happened. He was "wounded in the right knee going from the line to his dugout with piece of shell and died the same day". The records of No. 3 Canadian Casualty Clearing Station describe it as a gunshot wound, but whichever it was it caused his death.

HE WAS OUR DEAREST TREASURE
OUR DARLING ONLY SON
OUR BRAVE LADDIE

DRIVER HENRY GEORGE PAM

According to one witness in Pam's Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau file:

"Pam was a driver in the 4th Battery and was on the same team with me when he was hit on the 29th Sept at Ypres on the Menin Road. We were on an ammunition wagon. He was hit in the leg, foot and head, and taken to the D/S (Dressing Station)."

From the Dressing Station he was taken to No. 17 Casualty Clearing Station and it was from here that the Officer in Command wrote on 28 November 1917:

"He was admitted to this hospital in a critical condition, having been severely wounded by shell in leg and abdomen. His condition did not improve at all and he died as a result of these wounds at 2pm on 1.10.17. He was buried on 3.10.17 in the Soldier's Cemetery near to this hospital, his grave being duly marked and registered."

A boot maker in civilian life, Pam enlisted on 21 August 1914 and served in Gallipoli throughout the campaign before arriving in France in March 1916. His mother, Caroline Pam, chose his inscription.

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK
ON THY COLD GREY STONE
O SEA

SECOND LIEUTENANT JOSEPH IRVINE

Joseph Irvine's epitaph comes from one of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's best known short poems. In fact it was so well known that Irvine's widow, who chose it, would automatically have assumed that everyone would have known where the opening and closing verses of the poem were leading:

Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

In the two sentences, 'I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me', and 'the tender grace of a day that is dead will never come back to me', Tennyson perfectly expresses the inarticulate grief of the bereaved and their desperate longing for a past that will never return.

Joseph Irvine was killed on the opening day of the Battle of Broodseinde on 4 October 1916. There are several rather strange things about this man. The War Graves Commission has his name as Joseph Irvine and his wife as Agnes J Doak, formerly Irvine, indicating that she had married again. But she hadn't because Joseph Irvine was in actual fact Joseph Doak. He first enlisted in February 1915 as Joseph Doak, and then enlisted again in September 1915 as Joseph Irvine. In September 1917 he was court martialled after apparently threatening a soldier and shaking another one. He was severely reprimanded. Early the following month he was killed in action.
His brother, Christopher Charles Doak, serving with the South African Veterinary Corps, died in South Africa on 16 April 1916. In fact, to be brutally frank, he committed suicide. As the letter from the Department of Defence in Pretoria to the Secretary for Defence in Melbourne, Australia, says, "his death was the result of an overdose of morphia administered by Doak himself and was in no way connected with active service".

A WILLING SACRIFICE
FOR THE WORLD'S PEACE

SECOND LIEUTENANT WILLIAM KEITH SEABROOK

This inscription - "A willing sacrifice for the world's peace" - is a phenomenally magnanimous comment from the mother who had three sons killed on two consecutive days in September 1917: George Ross Seabrook and Theo Leslie Seabrook on 20 September and William Keith Seabrook on the 21st. But to whom does the word sacrifice refer? I think it has to be her son, William Keith Seabrook - and by implication her other sons - since they were the ones who volunteered to go and fight, who offered themselves willingly. There was no conscription in Australia so they were definitely volunteers.
An Australian Red Cross and Wounded Enquiry Bureau search was instituted within weeks of the brothers' deaths but it was never easy to find out exactly what happened to any one person in the heat of a battle, let alone three. Some reports say that all three brothers were killed by a single shell but others give more convincing accounts, like Private Cooper:

"T.L. Seabrook was killed by the same shell that wounded me, in fact I fell across him when I was hit. He was killed instantaneously. We were in a trench just this side of Polygon Wood, it was about 9 am."

Private Arnold gives slightly more gruesome details:

"Hit by shell head and stomach and legs. Died very soon after. He was badly hit. I saw him hit. Don't know whether he was buried. He was a friend of mine."

And Private Marshall gives a sequence to the deaths since it was whilst he was talking to George Seabrook that George:

"pointed out his brother Theo Leslie Seabrook's body lying on the ground. He had been killed by a shell. Informant states that another brother, Second Lieutenant William Keith Seabrook had been killed still earlier in the day, and that the Lieutenant had been his officer."

Neither George Ross nor Theo Leslie have graves and both are commemorated on the Menin Gate. William Keith, who had been wounded but not killed on the 20th, was taken to No. 10 Casualty Clearing Station in Lijssenthoek where he died the next day. All three brothers had been involved in the opening day of the Battle of Menin Road, the Australian Infantry Divisions' first action in the Third Ypres campaign.
Look up images of the Seabrook brothers on the Internet and you will find one of all three of them in uniform, presumably on the eve of their departure from Australia since they all left Australia on board HMAT Ascanius on 25 October 1916. And there is another photograph too, this one was found on William Keith's body, it is a photograph of his gentle-looking mother which has a bullet hole through the bottom left-hand corner

HAPPY WARRIOR

PRIVATE HARRY NOEL LEA

I have a friend whose father was killed in the Second World War and this is the inscription his mother put on her husband's grave. My friend has always hated it, feeling that his mother had insulted father's memory by describing him as a gung-ho, trigger-happy soldier. He had no idea that the term 'happy warrior' derived from a poem by William Wordsworth and that it described a soldier of quite different qualities.
Wordsworth asks the question, in his 1807 poem, "Who is the happy warrior? Who is he, that every man in arms would wish to be?". He then gives the answer: a man who is brave, modest, faithful, resolute, diligent and magnanimous, an honourable man, a man of high endeavour guided by reason and duty, a home loving man and thus "more brave for this, that he hath much to love".
The term gained in stature throughout the nineteenth century, enhanced by G.F. Watts painting titled 'The Happy Warrior', which shows a young knight on the point of death being embraced/greeted by an ethereal figure, presumably welcoming him to heaven. By the beginning of the twentieth century the phrase had become a universal term of approval for someone who had led a good, productive life serving the state.
Having told him all this, my friend realised that he had done his mother - and his father - a disservice.
Harry Noel Lea, a bank clerk from Sydney, enlisted on 15 January 1917, served with the 17th Australian Infantry, part of the 2nd Australian Division, and died of wounds received on 9 October when the Division were in action at Poelcapelle.

A PRAISE FOR THOSE
WHO FOUGHT AND FELL
TO SAVE THE EMPIRE'S NAME

PRIVATE JOHN ERNEST ORR

There's an Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau file for 'Jack' Orr, which gives us a wonderfully vivid description of him.

"Orr was a short, nuggety, red faced man, who had been a butcher before joining the army."
"Height about 5 ft 7 and a half inches, dark complexion and heavy dark moustache, sturdily built."

Reports about his death vary but these two seems to add up:

"On Nov. 1 when we were on reserves at Passchendaele, Orr was killed by a gas shell which burst right on the Bivy. I did not see him, but Pte. E. Calder B Co. was with Orr when he was killed and can give the details."
G. Taylor, 6650, D Co. 28 Bn A.I.F.

"I know that Private J.E. Orr died from the effects of gas on November 1st. 1917, and that he was buried in the field. Whether his grave was ever registered I could not say."
E. Calder, 6556, B Co. 28 Bn A.I.F.

The grave was not registered but in August 1919 Orr's body was discovered at map reference J.3.c.3.4 in an unmarked grave.

Robert Orr, Jack's elder brother, confirmed his inscription: "a praise for those who fought and fell to save the Empire's name". Included with those who 'fell' was was not only 'Jack', but another brother, George Wood Orr, who was killed on the Somme on 10 October 1916, and a brother-in-law, Albert Nordstrom, killed on 31 August 1916, also on the Somme.

NEVER MIND ME BOYS
SAVE SERJEANT BEATON

TROOPER GEORGE RICHARD SOMERVILLE JOHNSTON

Serjeant Beaton survived and returned to Australia at the end of the war. Trooper Johnston died of his wounds and was buried at Embarkation Pier Cemetery, Gallipoli. After the evacuation his grave was lost so that now he has a Special Memorial, a normal headstone but with the addition of the words 'Believed to be buried in this cemetery'.
Johnstone's stoicism must have been reported to his parents for his father to have been able to quote them in his inscription. It's the same stoicism as Private Ernest Proven's "Go on, I'll manage", which Ernest's father chose for his inscription. Simple, powerful words, which do more than words like, honour, glory, duty, sacrifice to illustrate the qualities of the soldiers of a century ago.

AFTER TWO WEARY YEARS
GOD TOOK HIM
TO HIS TWIN BROTHER
MY HAWTON

CORPORAL MATTHEW HAWTON MITCHELL

Corporal Mitchell's twin brother, Frederick, died of wounds on 1 July 1916. Hawton followed him two years later. The Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau found witnesses who could tell his mother what had happened:

"I knew casualty. He was a well built man, 5 ft. 5 ins. dark complexion, about 19 years of age. Casualty was in advance at Peronne Road. He was leading his machine gun team in attack when an H.E. shell exploded a piece entering his leg. I was 20 yds. away at the time. He was carried to hospital."
Pte. A.G. Thornton
16.5.19

The Registrar of No. 1 South African General Hospital finishes the story:

"This man was admitted to this hospital from No. 53 Casualty Clearing Station on the 24th August, 1918. He was suffering from a severe wound on the thigh with fracture of the femur. He had two attacks of secondary heamorrhage, the second of which rendered amputation of the limb necessary. The operation took place on the 1st September 1918. He recovered slightly on returning to his ward but collapsed later and died at 6.30 pm on the 1st September, 1918."

MY DEAR SON FRED
OH! THE PAIN
WHAT JOY WHEN WE MEET
AT JESUS' FEET

PRIVATE FREDERICK SUMMERSGILL MITCHELL

For Private Mitchell's mother the pain was doubled when Frederick's twin brother died of wounds in September 1918. The brothers have consecutive service numbers - 3541 and 3542 - even though from the embarkation rolls it looks as though Frederick joined up on 21 July 1915 and his brother, Matthew Hawton Mitchell, on 1 December 1915. They left Australia together on 5 January 1916.
By the time Mrs Mitchell chose her sons' inscriptions she was a widow. Like many, many relations her consolation in her grief came from the belief that they will all meet again in the afterlife. Her reference to Jesus' feet comes from the chorus of the hymn God be with you till we meet again.

Till we meet, till we meet,
Till we meet at Jesus' feet,
God be with you till we meet again.

GOODBYE AND GOD BLESS YOU
DEAR ERN AND SID
TILL WE ALL MEET AGAIN

PRIVATE ERNEST PALK

"Palk was a Signaller in C Coy. 9th Battn., tall, stoutly built, fresh complexion, rather large head, wore glasses, a proper cockney, not long joined up. They were in a dug out in a trench on telephone duty. I was close by in a small dug-out. I went to do my shift on phone and found the phone dugout had been blown up by a shell. Palk's body was lying on top of the wreckage, hit all over. I got a shovel and started digging to see if anyone else was underneath, and found Marsden's body also badly smashed."
Witness L/Cpl G.A. Simpson 7057
Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau Report

Born in Fulham, London, in the 1901 census Ernest Palk was 8 and his mother was dead. His brother Sidney was 5. In the 1911 census Ernest looks to have been a waiter at a London Club in Pall Mall. At some point he emigrated to Australia, joined up in 1917 and embarked for Europe in June 1917.
His inscription was chosen for him by his sister Rose. She makes reference to her other brother "Sid". Despite the fact that Palk is an unusual name it has not been easy to identify Sid but I think he has to be Lance Corporal S Palk, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, killed in action on 31 July 1917 and buried at New Irish Farm Cemetery, Belgium. My reasoning is that there are only two S. Palk's in the War Graves Commission's records and the other one, buried at Lijssenthoek, was called Stanley. However, the records make no mention of any family and he has no inscription.

DIED AS HE LIVED
A PATRIOT AND A MAN

PRIVATE NORMAN MARSHALL RAMAGE

You can sense a father's pride in this inscription: his twenty-four-year-old son had died 'a patriot and a man'. In fact, Private Ramage's father elaborated on this when he filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia. In answer to the question as to whether there were any biographical details that might be of interest to the historian of the AIF Mr Ramage wrote:

Who answered the call of duty and died as he lived a patriot and a man.

Ramage enlisted - 'answered the call of duty' - on 2 August, two months before Australia held a referendum on whether or not to introduce conscription. The answer was 'no'. He went missing on 25 October 1917 and his body was not recovered until the war was over. Enquiries by the Red Cross failed to find any witnesses but a letter from Sergeant Short in May 1918 related how Norman:

... was going along the communication trench at Passchendaele on Oct. 25th when a shell got him and killed him instantly. He was very badly knocked about. He was buried in the communication trench near where knocked. I did not see it happen and the person who was with Ramage at the time and saw it has since been killed. He told me about it.

READER PREPARE
TO MEET THY GOD

SAPPER ARTHUR OLIVER ELLIS

Reader, prepare to meet thy God.
Death is at no great distance; thou hast but a short time to do good. Acquire a heavenly disposition while here; for there will be no change after this life. ... In whatever disposition or state of soul thou diest, in that thou wilt be found in the eternal world. Death refines nothing, purifies nothing, kills no sin, helps to no glory. Let thy continual bent and inclination be to God, to holiness, to charity, to mercy, and to heaven: then, fall when thou mayest, thou wilt fall well.

This passage, from the writings of the Methodist biblical scholar and theologian Adam Clarke (c1760-1832), offers a stern warning: we know not the day nor the hour when death will take us so we must live our lives in readiness. After we are dead it will be too late to change our ways and win our place in 'the eternal world'.
It really is a very stern warning, which Ellis's step-mother chose. Other inscriptions convey the certainty that if a man dies fighting for his country he will earn his place in heaven: 'Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life' (Revelation 2:10).
Sapper Ellis was a eucalyptus distiller from Macedon just north west of Melbourne in Australia. He was killed in the fighting around the Menin Road. A fellow sapper told the Red Cross Enquiry Bureau that they were going forward:

in extended order as shelling was heavy. Casualty was in front of me and I saw an H.E. shell land alongside and he went down. I went to his assistance. Death was due to concussion. He was buried where he fell.

COULD WE HAVE STOOD
BESIDE YOUR GRAVE
AND SEEN YOU LAID TO REST

PRIVATE THOMAS FRANCIS MARNEY

Not to be there when your nineteen-year-old son dies, not to see him dead, not to be at his burial must have been a cause of so much extra grief. And for Mr and Mrs Marney, ten thousand miles away in Ararat, Australia, they must have known that they would never be able to visit their son's grave. So, Mrs Marney will have spoken for many mothers when she composed his headstone inscription. Could they have stood beside his grave and seen him laid to rest it would have given them some sort of comfort, gained them some sort of closure.
Thomas Francis Marney was a farm labourer: his father described him as a drover on the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia. He joined up in July 1916 when he was eighteen and was killed in action in Belgium fifteen months later.

OUR HERO AT REST
A BONZER BOY

PRIVATE ERNEST ROY STONE

This is such a wonderfully Australian, inscription. 'Bonzer', a splendid word but what exactly does it mean? Well it appears to be a term used to express admiration for just about anything, and when used about a person to mean excellent, remarkable, outstanding, or in today's vernacular - a great guy, a cool man. And at the time Tyne Cot Cemetery was constructed in the early 1920s, it was a very new word too, making one of its earliest appearances in the Australian magazine 'Bulletin' in 1904.
Ernest Stone's parents must have been pleased to have 'found' him. He went missing on 20 September 1917 during an attack on the Menin Road, but it was October 1920 before his body was discovered on the old battlefield. Luckily his identity disc was still on his body. Witnesses had told the Red Cross Enquiry Bureau that he must have been killed, even though no one had seen his body and no one had buried him. And they had also said that for various reasons he couldn't have been taken prisoner. But Stone's parents still hoped. As late as August 1919 Mrs Stone had sent the Red Cross a photograph of her son saying that although they had been advised that he was missing, and later that he was reported killed: "We think perhaps that he may not be killed but suffering from loss of memory".
The discovery of his body would have put an end to all this hope and this anxiety - their 'hero', their 'bonzer boy' was dead.

DEARLY LOVED HUSBAND
OF EFFIE
& LOVED DADDY
OF LITTLE MARJORIE

CAPTAIN THOMAS HENRY BONE

Thomas Bone was a school teacher from Subiaco, Western Australia who enlisted in January 1916, almost six months after his younger brother. He served with the 44th Battalion Australian Infantry, which arrived in the trenches in December 1916. The battalion saw extensive service in the Ypres sector where it's reported that only 158 men out of the whole battalion were unwounded by the time it went into rest on 21 October. Bone had been killed on the 4th. (NB The War Graves Commission gives the date of death as 5 October but all the witnesses say it was the 4th.)
As usual the Red Cross reports vary but it seems that during the battle of Broodseinde his spine was pierced by a very small piece of shrapnel that otherwise scarcely damaged him. He died almost instantly and was buried the next day.
Bone's brother, Cecil, died on 25 April 1918 of cerebro-spinal meningitis "due to exposure while on military duty". And what happened to Effie and little Marjorie? History does not relate.

WHEN DAYS ARE DARK
AND FRIENDS ARE FEW
MY DARLING SON
I LONG FOR YOU

PRIVATE ANDREW MCARTHUR

This may be a very conventional memorial inscription, and it is, but it can still jolt the heart. Andrew McArthur emigrated to Australia when he was 18 leaving his widowed mother in Scotland. The very next year war broke out and he volunteered virtually immediately, a fact that is recorded in his service number - 39. It was 24 August 1914. He joined the 8th Battalion Australian Infantry and embarked with it from Australia on 19 October to serve in Egypt, defending the Suez Canal from the Turks.
On 25 April 1915 the 8th Battalion landed on Gallipoli, at Anzac Cove. It remained on Gallipoli until the evacuation in December when it returned to Egypt. Here the Battalion was divided to provide battle hardened soldiers for the newly formed 60th Battalion along with fresh recruits from Australia. McArthur joined the 60th.
In March the Battalion was sent to France and on 19 July went into its first action at Fromelles with disastrous consequences - 780 casualties out of a battalion of 887 men. McArthur must have been one of the survivors - because he was killed fifteen days later.

FAREWELL MY DARLING SON
MY BEST BELOVED FAREWELL

PRIVATE ARNOLD ERNEST JONES

It was ten years before Arnold Jones' body was discovered and identified. Although he was known to have been killed between the 22nd and the 23rd September 1917, his grave was lost until it was discovered along with those of four other Australian soldiers on 24 February 1927.
His mother had instituted a Red Cross search and the files reveal that he was killed by a shell, wrapped in a ground sheet and buried on the spot. Although the grave was marked with a wooden cross, which had a tin can nailed to it with his name written inside the can, the grave was lost in the subsequent fighting.
Arnold Jones served under an alias: he called himself Arnold Ernest St Leon. The name St Leon was attached to one of Australia's famous circus families whose founder was John Jones. Arnold himself had been a tailor before he enlisted but I have a feeling that he could have been a member of the St Leon / Jones circus family.

MY BELOVED HUSBAND
OUR DEAR SON
CHERISHED IN OUR HEARTS FOR EVER

LIEUTENANT ALEXANDER HENDERSON MILLER

I love the way that Lieutenant Miller's parents and his wife, Belle, have shared this inscription - my husband, our son. I've often wondered how it must have been for parents who had to yield their status as next-of-kin to a wife. And sometimes it will have been to a wife of only a few weeks standing. That's why I liked this inscription, which Alexander Miller's wife confirmed.
Alexander Henderson Miller was born in Keiss, Caithness, Scotland where his father, John, was a police constable. At some point after January 1911 the family emigrated to Australia. By the time he enlisted on 7 July 1915, Miller was a school teacher in Beechworth, Victoria.
He left Australia for France a year later, on 8 July 1916 and was killed in action at Polygon Wood on 25 September 1917. A single letter in the Australian Red Cross Wounded and missing files states what happened to him:

"I saw him cut in half by a big shell at Hooge Crater, Ypres on the 25th Sept. He died instantaneously, - no agony whatsoever. He just cried out a couple of times and finished"
Pte W.H. Barkiville 2866
57th Australians, C Co. 12th Pltn

"SPES TUTISSIMA CAELIS"

GUNNER MAURICE DUNCAN BENJAMIN

The word is spelt 'caelis' in the War Grave Commission's records whereas some people would spell it 'coelis' but the meaning is the same - heaven - the surest hope is in heaven. I can't work out the significance of the quotation marks though. The phrase is the motto of some armigerous British families, but I haven't been able to discover a link between the Benjamins and these families.
Maurice Benjamin was killed at Passchendaele on 26 August 1917. In 1921 the bodies of five unidentified soldiers wearing Australian uniforms and boots were discovered at map reference 28.I.29.b.20.25. The Commission's records note:

"These five Australian soldiers' remains were properly buried in blankets and the graves equally spaced and probably all Artillery men as all were dressed like cavalry men."

It's the first time I've noticed this comment, that the bodies were "properly buried", and that this meant wrapped in blankets and equally spaced out. And it turns out that they were all Artillery men, all Gunners from the same Battery and in all probability from the same gun. All killed together and buried together by people who did it properly - even though the graves were not initially found and recorded by a Graves Registration Unit - and all subsequently identified.
Despite the fact that all five men were missing presumed killed in action none of their families instituted a Red Cross Enquiry. In fact, there is a Red Cross file in Maurice Benjamin's name in which there is a copy of a letter dated "September 17th 1917", to "The Manager, Bank of Queensland, 4 Queen Victoria Street, E.C", following up "our telephone conversation this morning", which says:

"We understand that you do not wish us to make inquiries for details of his death and burial."

Maurice Benjamin worked as a teller for the Bank of Queensland in Sydney before he joined up in October 1916. He left Australia in February 1917. It was 1930 before his mother filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia and this is something else I've never noticed before,the stamp on the front of the document, which indicates the length of time that it took for these records to be compiled. In Gunner Benjamin's case:

Next-of-kin communicated with for records and relics
Letter no. 12/11 3890
Date 6 Aug 1930

NOTHING IN MY HAND I BRING
SIMPLY TO THE CROSS I CLING

PRIVATE FRANK CULLEN

Yesterday's inscription quoted from the first line of the first verse of the hymn 'Rock of Ages', today's quotes the first two lines of the second verse:

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die!

Twenty-one-year-old Frank Cullen was a butcher from Mallala a small community 58 kilometres north of Adelaide where the war memorial commemorates ten men "who died in defence of home and liberty". Cullen enlisted on 9 September 1916, embarked from Australia on 6 November 1916 and was killed in action on Christmas Day 1917.

ROCK OF AGES CLEFT FOR ME

PRIVATE JOSEPH PERCY COOPER

Of all the hymns quoted in inscriptions this is one of the most popular:

Rock of ages cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

It was a favourite nineteenth century hymn appearing in virtually every Protestant hymnal - of which there were fifty-two. And it was a favourite funeral hymn, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband even asked for it to be played to him as he lay on his deathbed. Christ is the Rock of Ages, from whose side the water and blood flowed at his crucifixion, the event which guaranteed man's salvation.

Private Cooper was initially listed as missing. His parents instituted an Australian Red Cross Enquiry from which it was possible to piece together what happened to him:

"Informant states that the 26th A.I.F. were going into the line at Zonnebeke at about 8 pm on Oct/4th/17 when Cooper was struck by a shell and killed instantly a piece of shell went right through his lungs."
Private V.H. Lusk
"I saw him killed on the tape just as we left the duck boards to go over at Zonnebeke on the 4th October about 4.30 am. A whizz-bang killed him and Whipler and wounded several."
Private J.S. Locke
"I saw him killed at Ypres. He was caught by a shell fragment in the chest and killed instantly."
T.S. Burns
"I buried my comrade 400 yards from Zonnebeke Church as near as possible. ... The said soldier was a dear friend of mine and ... I would like his parents to know his comrades buried him decently."
Private G. Graham

IN MEMORY
OF THE DEARLY LOVED SON
OF J.H. PHILLIPS OF BRISBANE

PRIVATE ROBERT SIDNEY PHILLIPS

Soren Hawkes drew my attention to Private Phillips on her Twitter account, @sorenstudio. She published this document from Phillips' Australian Red Cross and Wounded Enquiry Bureau file:

Phillips R.S. 3098
Killed Sep. 25th 1917
Was in C. Coy., Lewis Machine Gunner. He was badly wounded in the legs and body during the hop over at Ypres. I saw him immediately after he was hit, his right leg was practically off. He later drew his revolver and blew his brains out. I did not see this happen. I don't know where he was buried.
Witness: - Sgt. W.S. Ward 1884, 49th Battn

Yet again I wonder how much information discovered by the Red Cross was passed on to the next-of-kin. Six months later another witness reported that he too had been told that Phillips had shot himself and the following month, April 1918 another witness gave a more graphic description:

I saw him after he was killed on September 25th at Passchendaele; he had been blown out of a shell hole and twisted like a cork screw. He crawled back into a shell hole and blew his head off with a rifle.

Rifle is probably more likely than revolver as only officers carried revolvers but whatever the weapon it appears that Phillips did kill himself. I wonder if his father knew. I rather hope not as Robert Phillips was a Roman Catholic, he said so on his attestation form, and to a Roman Catholic suicide is a mortal sin.

SHOULD I FALL, GRIEVE NOT
I SHALL BE ONE WITH THE SUN
WIND AND FLOWERS

HENRY JAMES BEZER

This poetic inscription was written by Leslie Coulson in one of his last letters to his parents before he was killed in action on 8 October 1916:

"If I should fall, do not grieve for me. I shall be one with the wind and the sun and the flowers."

The letter is quoted in the introduction to the book of Coulson's poetry that his father published in 1917, 'From an Outpost and Other Poems'. The book sold very well, which must be how Henry Bezer's father came across the words. It's interesting that Coulson's father didn't use it as his son's inscription, or in fact any of his son's poetry, but instead chose to quote from the opening lines of John Milton's 'Samson Agonistes'.
Henry Bezer was killed by shell-fire on 22 August 1918 as the Australians slowly but surely advanced into previously German-held territory. A fellow soldier told the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau what happened:

"Informant states that they both belonged to the 107th Howitzer Battery. On 22/8/18 the Battery was in action at a place called by the boys 'Happy Valley' not far away from Bray. About half past 4 or 5 am just after the action started Bezer was killed outright by a shell, while he and Informant were working the gun to which they both belonged. Informant was right alongside him at the time and yet was not touched."

These photographs, from the Australian War Memorial Collection, show the 7th Brigade Australian Field Artillery in action on the day Bezer was killed.

HERE IS ONE AT REST
WHO LOVED HIS HOME WORLD BEST

CHARLES EDWARD BLACKBOURN

There is no recorded next-of-kin for Private Blackbourn in the War Graves Register but his father filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia so perhaps he chose his inscription too. Interestingly, the inscription doesn't say that Charles Blackbourn sacrificed himself for love of his 'home world' but that 'he loved his home world best' - better than what?
Blackbourn was a volunteer not an unwilling recruit. There was no conscription in Australia. In October 1916, as the tide of willing volunteers dried up, the Government held a referendum to find out whether the public would support its proposals for conscription. The public's answer was 'no'. And it was a bigger 'no' when the Government held a second referendum on the issue in December 1917.
But Blackbourn had volunteered long before this, despite the fact that he 'loved his home world best'. Perhaps his family wanted to emphasise on his headstone that here was no gung-ho soldier but a home-loving boy who did what he saw was his duty and as a consequence died of wounds at a field ambulance dressing station far away in Brandhoek, Belgium.

OUR SON

CORPORAL GEORGE SCOTT BLACK

This is such a wonderful inscription, so anonymous and yet so possessive - "Our son". Mr and Mrs William Black make no attempt to identify themselves on the headstone, they just wanted the world to know that George Scott Black was "our son".
Braidwood, New South Wales, has put together a folder on Corporal Scott as part of its centenary commemorations. Among the documents is his attestation form - he attested on 2 March 1915 - his active service record, with its record of his hospital admissions for diarrhoea and dysentery, and the 56 days Field Punishment No. 2 he received on 4 April 1916 for using insubordinate language to his superior officer.
There is also a letter from Mrs Black to Base Records telling them that she had taken out insurance on her son's life and now wanted to claim against it but that the insurance company had told her that the telegram from the army was not sufficient proof of her son's death. The company required a medical certificate, could they advise her as to how she might go about getting this extra proof.

WE ALWAYS THINK
OF YOU DEAR SAM
AND SHALL UNTIL WE DIE

SERGEANT SAMUEL GEORGE JUBILEE BEAUCHAMP

Sam Beauchamp died of gas poisoning in a Casualty Clearing Station near Poperinge on 15 October 1917. Whilst there is no specific information about when exactly he was gassed, the Germans had launched a mustard gas attack on the British trenches in the region on the night of 11/12 October 1917 so it could have been then.
I like this inscription. So many families used deeply conventional, poetic phraseology when they picked an inscription that this is refreshingly simple.
Beauchamp's father chose it, his mother having died in 1912. So who were the "we" who would always think of him? The answer is Amelia, Frederick, George, Victor, Gladys, Eric, Florence, John and Sydney, his nine brothers and sisters, the last of whom died in the 1980s.

A WHITE MAN
AND TRUE FRIEND
SADLY MISSED

SAPPER VINCENT O'SULLIVAN

There's something rather moving about this inscription. Vincent O'Sullivan had no family; the best the War Graves Commission could come up with was that he was a 'native of Ireland'. And no family included no wife.
So where did the inscription come from? It was written by Mr S.J. Millane, Brown Hill, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. And who was he? We only know who he was because it was Millane who filled in O'Sullivan's form for the Roll of Honour of Australia and in the section that asks for the form-fillers relationship to the soldier he has written, "friend and partner". In this context he would have meant partner in business, and what was the business - prospecting. Otherwise all Millane knew about his friend was that he was "about 40 years" and that he had served in the Boer War having enlisted in Ireland.
It's what Millane says that is so touching; this burly prospector - I am imaging things here - refers to O'Sullivan as his sadly missed true friend and describes him as 'a white man'. By this he does not mean a man with a white skin but a man who was good company, decent and trustworthy - a good bloke.
Vincent O'Sullivan, who described himself on enlistment as a miner, served as many miners did in the Australian Tunnelling Corps. Here they laid cables and dug saps, trenches, dug-outs and mines. There is no record of what happened on 11 August 1918 but three miners from the 3rd Australian Tunnellers died that day and were buried in Hersin Communal Cemetery Extension.

"THE FIRST BORN IS MINE"
SAITH THE LORD

PRIVATE JOHN BEDE CARROLL

John Bede Carroll was indeed his parents' first born child but the inscription they chose for him is chilling - their God is a savage God. The text comes from Numbers 3:13

"Because all the first born are mine; for on the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I hallowed unto me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast: mine shall they be: I am the Lord."

John Carroll was 16 when he enlisted on 23 May 1915, giving his age as 18. He served in Gallipoli from September 1915 until the evacuation in December. In March 1916 he transferred to the Western Front with the rest of the Australian contingent. According to his father, writing on the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia, John Carroll served as a stretcher bearer throughout the Battle of Pozieres, July-August 1916, and was fatally wounded at Factory Corner, Flers. He does not give a date for this but in November 1916 Australian medical units were posted to caves in this area. Conditions in the region were by now truly appalling, the rain having reduced the terrain to thick, deep, viscous mud, making fighting or the carrying of either casualties or supplies virtually impossible.

WHEN THE FIELDS
ARE WHITE WITH DAISIES
I'LL RETURN
IN LOVING MEMORY

PRIVATE GEORGE EDWARD BEAVIS

George Beavis' inscription comes from a popular Irish song written some time around the end of the nineteenth century. The words of the song originally referred to a sailor:

"I once stood in a harbour, as a ship was going out,
On a voyage unto a port beyond the sea.
I watched the blue-clad sailor, as he bade his last farewell
To the lassie who he loved most tenderly.
I heard the sailor promise to the lassie now in tears,
"When the fields are white with daisies I'll return."

During the war, Bamforth produced one of their three-card picture postcard series featuring this song. The card with the first verse shows a sailor but the card with the words of the chorus shows a khaki-clad soldier.
What is a bit strange about this inscription is that it was chosen by his mother, Mrs Sarah Jane Beavis, not by a wife or sweetheart. However, it must be for the words of the second verse that she chose it. The sweetheart learns that the ship has sunk and as she stands there weeping she hears a voice reassuring her that they will meet again:

"God has spared me for your keeping, and the promise once I made,
When the fields are white with daisies I'll return."

George Beavis died of wounds in a casualty clearing station in Dickebusch. According to a letter from the Officer in Charge of the 1st Field Ambulance, written on 1 February 1918 to the Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau:

" ... he was admitted to the Dressing Station of this Ambulance on the night of 20.9.17 with shell wound of right leg, the wounds being so extensive as to necessitate amputation of the leg. He was suffering a good deal from shock, and died next morning. The burial took place at Military Huts Cemetery Dickebusch."

CHARLEY, YOUR PLACE IS VACANT
IN OUR HOME
WHICH CAN NEVER BE FILLED

PRIVATE CHARLES JOHN MANN

The vacant place or vacant chair was once a common euphemism for death. The idea probably predates the American Civil War but a song from that era, recorded in 1915 by John McCormack, spread its popularity beyond the shores of America. It was originally written to mourn and honour a dead Union soldier:

At our fireside, sad and lonely, often will the bosom swell,
At remembrance of the story how our noble Willie fell;
How he strove to bear our banner though the thickest of the fight,
And uphold our country's honour in the strength of manhood's might.

And it kept that association into the First World War. The original song referred to the family gathering for Thanksgiving but is relevant to all family occasions. These are the words of the chorus:

We shall meet but we shall miss him
There will be one vacant chair.
We shall linger to caress him
While we breathe our evening prayer.

Charles Mann was killed in action in January 1917. Buried close to the front line, his body was exhumed in August 1920 and reinterred in Lesboeufs. 'Charley's' father confirmed his inscription - giving it added poignancy by addressing his son rather than the reader.

R.I.P.
HIS SLEEPING EYES
HOLD VISIONS
OF AUSTRALIAN SKIES

SECOND LIEUTENANT JACQUES MONTAGUE D'ALPUGET

Jacques Montague D'Alpuget was killed in action in France on 17 July 1916. His sister, Blanche, chose his inscription. It comes from a poem by Nina Murdoch called 'Jacques', published in the University of Sidney magazine, 'Hermes', in August 1918, "In memory of Lieut. Jacques M. d'Alpuget (54th Battn. A.I.F.), Athlete and Soldier, killed in action in France. He lies buried in an old orchard, three miles behind the firing line".
Nina Murdoch, who became a well-known Australian traveller, journalist, author and broadcaster, was a friend of Jacques d'Alpuget's sister, Blanche. History does not relate what she was to Jacques.
The poem begins:

The calmness of the orchard's breast
Was broken for a little season,
When he that loved all clean things best -
Rigour of sport, the warrior's zest
And kindliness and gentle reason -
Was carried there to take his rest.

The writer takes comfort from the apple blossom spilling on his grave, the song-bird's trill and the sunbeams keeping "laughing watch" - "Where in this, is cause to weep?" The inscription comes from verse 4.

Now when summer swoons and sighs
Memory on him lays her finger.
Shut behind his quiet eyes
Are visions of Australian skies,
And when Spring days about him linger,
Boronia fragrance to him flies.

HE DIED
FOR THE GREATEST CAUSE
IN HISTORY
EVER REMEMBERED

MAJOR BENJAMIN BENNETT LEANE

This is horrible - you've read of men being blown to pieces by a shell but people don't usually give the details. Major Leane's wife must have instituted a Red Cross enquiry - I hope they didn't tell her everything. I have pieced together the evidence of a number of witnesses:

"I saw Major Leane blown to pieces. I saw his head and pieces of his shoulder." "A shell took him square and blew him to pieces." "A whizz-bang hit him and blew him to pieces. The only thing we could find was his head and a leg." "I searched for his body and eventually found his head and face almost uninjured." "His brother, Colonel Leane, went out and collected the remains." "His brother picked up his head and what was left of him and buried it somewhere I think behind the line." "His brother recognised his head and buried him himself."

The death of Major Benjamin Bennett Leane who died "for the greatest cause in history".

BELOVED SON OF A. & M. ROSS
OUR BOY
LIFE'S HIGHEST MISSION
FULFILLED

PRIVATE WALLACE ROSS

Wallace Ross was admitted to hospital in Rouen on 11 November, dangerously ill with a gun shot wound to his head. He died six days later - 'Life's highest mission fulfilled': to die for your country.
It was his sister, Catherine MacDonald, who filled in the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia and confirmed Wallace's headstone inscription, their parents would appear to have been dead.
Wallace Ross, a rubber worker from Northcote, Australia, enlisted in July 1915 and embarked from Australia on 23 November as part of the reinforcements for the 5th Battalion Australian Infantry. Withdrawn from Gallipoli in mid-December, the battalion served briefly in Egypt before being transferred to the Western Front where it was heavily involved in the Somme campaign at Pozieres. Ross was wounded on 26 July with a slight gun shot wound to the head. He was back in action after two months. And then two months later he was dead.
Three years after the death of her brother, Catherine MacDonald gave birth to a son whom she named Douglas Wallace Ross MacDonald.

BROTHER TO A.H. HODGES
13TH BTN. KILLED AT GALLIPOLI

PRIVATE CHARLES FREDERICK HODGES

It was nine months before Charles Hodges' parents discovered his fate, nine months in which the
Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau had tried to find witnesses who had seen what had happened to him. Eventually they tracked down Corporal L O'Neill who told them definitively:

"On 14th November at 5 am we were attacking; we failed in our objective and retired to our front line which we held. I saw Hodges after we had got back to our lines about 9 am go outside our trench; there were wounded men inside the trench and he had to go outside to get passed them. A sniper hit him in the head and he died about two minutes after. I was right alongside of him."

Mr and Mrs Hodges therefore did eventually find out what had happened to this son, but they never found out about his elder brother, Albert Henry. He went missing in Gallipoli on 22 August 1915 in the unsuccessful Australian assault on Hill 60. His body was never found and curiously there is no record of his parents instituting a Red Cross search for him. Albert Hodges is commemorated on the Lone Pine memorial in Gallipoli and on his brother's grave in France.

BIRTHLESS
DEATHLESS AND CHANGELESS
REMAINETH THE SPIRIT
FOR EVER

PRIVATE ERNEST GEORGE DORNBUSCH

This is an unusual inscription from an unusual source, the Bhagavad-Gita a Hindu scripture. It's an interesting inscription too, especially for a machine gunner. Krishna argues:

"Thou grievest where no grief should be! thou speak'st words lacking wisdom! for the wise in heart mourn not for those that live, nor those that die. ... He who shall say, "Lo! I have slain a man!" He who shall think, "Lo! I am slain!" those both know naught! Life cannot slay. Life is not slain! Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never; never was time it was not; end and beginning are dreams! Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever; death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!"
The Bhagavad-Gita Book 2

There's another interesting aspect to this inscription. There were only three Dornbusches killed in the First World War and buried in War Grave Commission cemeteries and the other two are German soldiers: Kanonier Hermann Dornbusch and Obermatrose Karl Johann Dornbusch. Is this why the Australian National War Memorial records his name as Ernest George Dornbush, without the telltale 'c'? This is the way he spelt his name when he enlisted, and the way his mother spelt her name when she signed the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia, although someone has written on the outside of this form, "correct name Dornbusch".
George Ernest Dornbusch was born in London. His parents emigrated to Australia when he was five months old and settled in Sydney where he attended Sydney Grammar School. On enlistment, Dornbusch described himself as an engineer. His mother on the Roll of Honour goes further and describes him as a "sheep shearing machinery expert". He enlisted in April 1915, served in Gallipoli and France and was killed on 14 November 1916.
A Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau search revealed that he had been killed by a shell.

"I was in company with this man in an attack near Fleurs. I was injured by the shell that killed Durnbush. ... I knew him well, we were in the same gun coy. ... This man was killed instantly but I can give you no details re his burial. I saw him lying dead before I was my self removed to the clearing hospital."
C. Mallard
Dartford Hospital
8.3.17

Durnbusch was buried in a shell hole and after the war his body was reinterred in Warlencourt British Cemetery.

A SOLDIER OF RABAUL
GALLIPOLI & FRANCE
HIS DUTY DONE

PRIVATE JAMES FREDERICK BUCKLAND

Private Buckland's inscription is a reminder of a forgotten episode from the earliest days of the war. In September 1914, at Britain's request, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force invaded the island of New Britain, part of German New Guinea, in order to take out a strategically important wireless station at Rabaul, which would otherwise have been of great value to the German East Asiatic Squadron. The successful struggle, known as the Battle of Bita Paka, was the Australian's first military engagement of the war. According to his inscription, Private Buckland was part of this Force.
As a member of the 19th Battalion Australian Infantry, many of whose members had also been part of this Force, Buckland served in Gallipoli from 21 August to 19 December 1915 and then in France until his death in November 1916 during the battle of Flers. Conditions by now on the Somme battlefields were truly appalling and it was the attackers who had the worst of it. Any gains the Australians made was into a devastated landscape whereas the defenders were withdrawing into relatively untouched territory. After this, 'Almost as bad as Flers' became the yardstick against which the Australians would measure conditions.
It was in these conditions that Private Buckland went missing on 14 November. An Australian Red Cross file records his family's attempt to find out what had happened to him - and the difficulties of doing so.
"He is in hospital in England. I am certain of this. Men in the Bn. have heard from him."
Private Cox 26.2.17
"Private Griggs ... told me in Nov. last that he had seen Buckland killed. He was blown up in a trench at Flers.".
Private Williamson 8.6.17
"I saw Buckland at Weymouth about six weeks ago, in the Westham camp. He had an arm off ..." Cooper E. 10.9.17
However, six months earlier, on 3 March 1917, the Australians had captured a frontline German trench and removed a wallet from the body of an otherwise unidentifiable Australian soldier. The wallet belonged to James Buckland and a week later was handed to his brother, Private CM Buckland. The body was buried as James Frederick Buckland but as late as October 1919 there's a letter in the Red Cross file showing that they were still checking: "No trace in Germany".

A MOTHER'S LOVE LIES HERE

PRIVATE WILLAIM OGSTON CRAIB

The report of William Craib's death in the Aberdeen Evening Express refes to both his parents so it's interesting that the inscription only refers to his mother. However, the privileging of mothers' grief is something that is noticeable in a number of personal inscriptions.
In a sense, Mrs Mary Craib had already lost her son once. Born in Aberdeen, William Craib left school, worked in the docks and then went to Canada, to work on the Grand Trunk Railway. In 1913 he went to Australia and when he enlisted in April 1915 he was working at the Brisbane gasworks. Craib sailed for Egypt in May, served in Gallipoli from September to December and was then transferred with the 26th Battalion to the Western Front, arriving in France in March 1916. Between 28 July to 7 August the 26th Battalion took part in the battle of Pozieres; Craib died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station in Puchevillers on the 6th.
Three months earlier the Craigs had finally learnt that their eldest son, George, missing in action since the 25 September, was dead, killed at the battle of Loos. George's body was never found so he has neither grave nor inscription.

LIFE IS SERVICE

SECOND LIEUTENANT MAURICE EDWARD KOZMINSKY

'Life is service' comes from a very famous quotation but whether it was Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) or Rabindrath Tagore (1861-1941) who wrote it the Internet can't decide. It could of course be neither. However, this is the full quote:

I slept and dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and saw that life is all service. I served and saw that service is joy.

Maurice Kozminsky enlisted in May 1915, received a commission in July, was promoted Lieutenant in January 1916, and sailed from Australia in March. After a spell in Egypt, he joined the 7th Battalion in France and on 22 July 1916 went into action with them at Pozieres.
The Australian success at Pozeires on the 23rd came at a huge price and had costly consequences too. Since their's had been the only success, the Germans subjected the area to their greatest artillery barrage yet, a frenzy of savagely remorseless bombardment. By the 29 July the 7th Battalion's losses were so great that they had to be withdrawn. However, they were in action again on 15 August. Kozminsky was killed on the 19th.
In June 1917, Kozminsky's family asked if the Australian Red Cross could find out what had happened to him. The reports do not make for pleasant reading: "he was hit by machine gun fire in left side thigh and stomach and later on got one arm blown off by shell". "I saw him on the stretcher with one arm off and shot through the abdomen". "He left no message, being too weak to speak". Kozminsky was described by one witness as "the whitest man that ever went into action", and by another as "a Russian, and a favourite with the boys and a game sort of fellow".
In fact, the Kozminsky family were not Russian. Abraham Kosminsky, Maurice's father, was 14 when he arrived in Australia from Poland. He built up his business interests there until by 1912 he was Chairman of Austral Hat Mills Ltd, where Maurice was a director and a prominent members of Melbourne's Jewish community.

FORTH FROM THE CONFLICT
UNASHAMED HE PASSED
VICTORIOUS ON HIS WAY

CAPTAIN THOMAS CHARLES RICHMOND BAKER, DFC, MM AND BAR

Before the war, Captain Baker DFC, MM and Bar was a clerk with the Bank of New South Wales. Enlisting in July 1915, he served originally with the 6th Australian Field Brigade. He won his first Military Medal in December 1916 and the Bar in June 1917. That September he applied to join the Australian Flying Corps as a mechanic and was accepted instead for flying training. He began active duty in June 1918 and was credited with seven aircraft and one balloon destroyed, and four planes brought down. Then on 4 November, when returning from a bombing raid, his plane was brought down behind enemy lines. His body was not recovered.
There is an extensive Australian Red Cross file on the incident, which is well worth reading. Extraordinarily it contains a request to the "Commanding General of the Flying Corps" from the Commander of Flying Squadron 5 for an acknowledgement of "the 26th air victory of the Airshipdriver Lieut. von Hantelman", who says:

"At 11.35 noon I attacked near Le Chesne a single-seated flying machine and shot it down. The adversary was smashed to pieces in falling down. von Hantelmann."

Why is the document in English, who is writing to who? The document is stamped Australian Red Cross Society, Prisoner of War Mission, Berlin W.8, Wilhelmstrasse, 70. Is it a translation of the German documents concerning the incident, translated so as to help the Red Cross locate Baker's body?
In September 1920 an unknown British Flying Officer's body was exhumed and reburied in Escanaffles Communal Cemetery. The exhumation report stated that the body was too broken and decayed for there to be any indication as to its hair colour or height, the clothing had rotted away and there was no identity disc, in fact there was nothing to identify the body other than the date of death, 6.11.18 - which wasn't of course the date Baker was shot down.
The bottom of the report has a pencil note - "Copy to Dame Livingstone". Dame Adelaide Livingstone was a remarkable American woman who, at the end of the war, "was appointed the Army Council head of the War Office mission to trace British soldiers reported as ‘missing’ in France and Flanders. In this capacity she travelled widely in Europe, managing a staff of officials from both Germany and England. Between 1920 and April 1922 she was assistant director of Graves Registration and Enquiries in central Europe, with headquarters in Berlin and with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. For her wartime services she was among the first women to be created DBE in 1918." [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]
Thomas Baker's body was eventually identified and his mother was given the opportunity to chose an inscription. This comes from verse 6 of a poem written by Harold Begbie in 1905 called 'Trafalgar Day - the Good End':

Dishonour tarnished not his flag, no stain upon his battles lay,
Forth from the conflict, unashamed, he passed victorious on his way;
Forth from the conflict, unashamed, with thanks to God, without a sigh.
So died for England's sake, this man, and whispered it was sweet to die.
Draw near and mark with reverent mind
How die the Captains of Mankind.

BROTHER BILL A SNIPING FELL
WE MISS HIM STILL
WE EVER WILL

TROOPER WILLIAM ALBERT BAKER

The end of November 1915 saw the Gallipoli peninsular in the grip of a huge storm and on the 28th the first snow fell. The conditions were absolutely terrible, men literally froze to death and certainly couldn't function properly. In addition, when the snow stopped falling it had transformed the landscape, highlighting the khaki-clad soldiers against the white background. Is this how sniper William Baker was spotted and killed?

REACHED THE FARTHEST
OBJECTIVE TILL THE DAWN BREAK
AND SHADOWS FLEE

SERGEANT EDRIC DOYLE KIDSON

It's not immediately obvious what Sergeant Kidson's inscription, or rather the first four words of it, means, even though his mother intended it to be very specific. However, there are a number of clues: first the date of his death - 25 April 1915, the first day of the Gallipoli landings - second the cemetery, Baby 700, one of the first objectives on the first day, and third Edric Doyle's battalion, the 12th Australian Infantry, the covering force for the landings. The 12th landed at 4.30 am and within hours small parties had reached the peak of Baby 700. But by the evening they were unable to hold the position and were forced to withdraw. Allied forces never reached this position again during the whole Gallipoli campaign - and nor was Edric Kidson ever seen again after this action.
Enquiries by the Australian Red Cross elicited confused reports - Kidson was a prisoner in Constantinople; he had returned to Australia having been wounded; he was alive and well on the peninsular in October 1915. But Corporal Reddrop reported that "he accompanied informant right out to Gaba Tepe, when acting as a covering line. He (Kidson) was not with the company when they were ordered to retire."
Once the war was over, Kidson's body was discovered, identified and buried near where he had been killed. And after all the confusion, his mother was determined that people should know exactly what had happened. She filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour for Australia with more than usually precise details.

Date of death: 25th April 1915 (before noon)
Age at time of death: 22 years and 3 months
Any other biographical details likely to be of interest to the Historian of the A.I.F., or his Regiment: He as acting Platoon Commander did reach on the extreme heights of Gallipoli an objective never afterwards obtained and that a few hours after the landing at dawn.

This is why Edric Doyle Kidson's inscription reads: "Reached the farthest objective". The second part of the inscription is a popular choice based on the Old Testament Song of Solomon: Until the day break and the shadows flee away.

MY LIFE I GAVE
FOR MY COUNTRY'S GOOD
& THEY TOOK IT FROM ME
WHERE I STOOD

PRIVATE HARRY WILFRED PAYNE

This inscription, which appears in Trefor Jones' On Fame's Eternal Hunting Ground, has a ring of Kipling's famous epitaph:

I could not look on death, which being known,
Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.

Harry Payne was a volunteer - My life I gave for my country's good - but who were the "they" who took his life from him "where I stood?" Was he bound to a post and executed? As it happens, the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau has the answer. Payne's family wrote to enquire about the circumstances of his death and the Bureau learnt from a witness, Private A Wolland, that:

"There was a lull in our fighting at the time and Payne was looking over the parapet pointing out something in the German lines to a comrade. While his head was exposed he was struck by a rifle bullet from a German sniper. He was wearing a steel helmet but the bullet went right through ... he was removed to a dressing station in the rear of our lines, but died on the way there."

Few families knew the exact circumstances of their relation's death but the Payne's did and reflected it in their son's inscription.

A GOOD SON
A GOOD CITIZEN
A BRAVE MAN

PRIVATE REGINALD HASTINGS COOK

A lovely tribute from a father to his son - what more could a father want his son to be, except alive of course.
Reginald Hastings Cook enlisted on 25 May 1915, sailed for Gallipoli on 14 July and was killed on 25 November.

"He was killed a half past six on the 25th November, a Friday at Larges Post. Detailed with three others for patrol duty and whilst climbing out over the trench was shot right through the head by a Turkish sniper about fifteen yards off, who must have gained the knowledge in some way that the patrol was to start from this point and lay in waiting. Death was instantaneous. Buried the following morning at eleven o' clock in a cemetery close to Shrapnel Green. The memorial service was held over the grave at two thirty. Cook was very great friend of informant. The above facts were taken from informant's diary."
Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau files

SOLDAT SANS PEUR
ET SANS REPROCHE
TOMBE SUR LE CHAMP D'HONNEUR

CAPTAIN HAROLD BURKE MC

On his inscription, Captain Burke's family associate his name with two of France's most respected soldiers.
The "soldat sans peur et sans reproche" - soldier without fear and beyond reproach, or the fearless and faultless knight - was the description given by contemporary chroniclers to Pierre du Terrail (1476-1524), the Chevalier Bayard. As he lay dying, mortally wounded in battle, his one time friend and now enemy, Charles duc de Bourbon, expressed his sorrow but was told by Terrail:
"Sir, there is no need to pity me. I die as a man of honour ought, doing my duty; but I pity you, because you are fighting against your king, your country, and your oath."
The second soldier is Theophile Malo (1743-1800) who served with the 46th Regiment and for his renowned bravery and modesty - he refused the promotion to high rank that he deserved - was named by Napoleon the "first grenadier of France". Killed in action at Neuburg, when the roll was called after the battle another grenadier stepped forward and said, "Tombe sur le champs d'honneur", fallen on the field of battle. On Napoleon's orders, his name continued to be called with the same response, a custom that was observed for at least 100 years after his death - and is still observed whenever the 46th's colour is paraded.
During the First World War the phrase was used for French soldiers killed in battle.
Harold Burke enlisted as a private in August 1914. He served throughout the Gallipoli campaign rising rapidly through the ranks until he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in September 1915. Promoted captain in August 1916, he won the Military Cross for his "sound judgment and good leadership" at Ypres on 20 September 1917. On 23 August 1918, just before the Australians were withdrawn from the front, he was killed outright when a shell fired by his own side landed short and exploded beside him.

A GOOD LIFE
HATH BUT A FEW DAYS
BUT A GOOD NAME
ENDURETH FOR EVER

CAPTAIN WILLIAM HAROLD NICHOLLS

Captain Nicolls' inscription was chosen by his wife. It comes from Ecclesiasticus in the Book of the Apocrypha.

Have regard to thy name; for that shall continue with thee above a thousand great treasures of gold.
A good life hath but a few days: but a good name endureth for ever.
Ecclesiasticus 41:12-13

'Name' was a great preoccupation after the first world war. The names of the dead were recorded on memorials all over the Empire, great effort being exerted to ensure that no name was excluded. The statement "Their name liveth for evermore", the words from Ecclesiasticus 44:14, were carved onto Lutyen's Stone of Remembrance in all but the smallest war cemeteries, and was often the dedication on memorials in churches, villages, schools etc, all over the world. A similar sentiment was expressed on the the next-of-kin memorial scroll, "let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten", although here the responsibility for the names living for evermore lies with the generations who come afterwards. Name, or as in the case of this inscription, a good name, also has to do with renown, something that is above 'great treasures of gold' and which will endure for ever.

Billie Nicholls had emigrated to Australia and was working in the crockery department of Messrs Cribb and Foote, Ipswich, Queensland, when war broke out. He enlisted in the Australian Infantry and served throughout the Gallipoli campaign, earning a commission. The newspaper report of his death tells that he was so popular with his fellow soldiers that they all clubbed together to buy him a complete officer's kit.
Nicholls was born in Wales and his parents still lived there. In September 1916 he married Lily May Fuell in Holy Trinity, Llandbradach, South Wales. Returning to the front after a short holiday, he was killed on 26 January 1917. A shell dropped on the dugout where he had just gone for a rest and he was killed by concussion. This was the general conclusion of an Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau search, most of the witnesses assuring his wife that his body appeared untouched.

LET THOSE WHO COME AFTER
SEE TO IT THAT HIS NAME
BE NOT FORGOTTEN

CAPTAIN WILLIAM CALHOUN

Private Calhoun's inscription comes from the last lines of the memorial scroll sent to the next-of-kin of every man killed in the war. Written on high quality paper in calligraphic script, the scroll outlines the qualities of the dead man and of the sacrifice he had made.

"He whom this scroll commemorates was numbered among those who, at the call of King and Country, left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom.
Let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten."

The final decision on the wording was made by Dr Montague Rhodes James, the author M.R. James, Provost first of King's College, Cambridge and then of Eton. The scroll acknowledges the fortitude and endurance of the men and asks the future to ensure that their names are not forgotten . There is no expression of gratitude, this had come in the letter of condolence from King George V that followed receipt of the news of the casualty's death:

"The Queen and I offer you our heartfelt sympathy in your great sorrow.
We pray that your country's gratitude for a life so nobly given in its service may bring you some measure of consolation.
George R.I."

And with a note from the King accompanying the memorial plaque all next-of-kin received once the war was over.

"I join with my grateful people in sending you this memorial of a brave life given for others in the Great War.
George R.I."

REST IN THE LORD
LOVING MEMORY
FROM NELL AND CHARLES

DRIVER EDWARD ALBERT FOLLINGTON

Edward Albert Follington was one of David and Jane Follington's seven children. The family came from Augathella, a small settlement based round a watering hole in Queensland, where Edward worked as a labourer.
The inscription was chosen by one of Edward's brothers, Charles, but I can't work out who Nell was. Charles and Albert's two sisters were called Florence May and Mary Jane, and Charles' wife was called Mary. Perhaps Nell was a 'special friend'.
The family instituted an Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau search, which revealed that Edward and two other drivers had been killed by a shell, which burst beside them on the road where they were loading ammunition for the guns. The three of them were hastily buried close by, but after the war their bodies were exhumed and re-buried in the Guards' Cemetery, Lesboeufs.

Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him
Psalm 37:7

DEAR FRANCIS
LOVE TILL WE MEET AGAIN
UNCLE, AUNTIE
WILLIE, ELEANOR

SERJEANT FRANCIS WILFRED HOLT DYSON

The Eleanor on this inscription was Francis Dyson's only child and his next-of-kin, a fourteen-year-old daughter who by her father's death became an orphan. Willie was his brother, an officer in the East Yorkshire Regiment, and Uncle and Auntie were Walter and Marion Rowley of Alder Hill, Meanwood, Yorkshire, who brought the brothers up after both their parents died.
Francis, who was born in Riga then in Russia, was educated at St Edward's, Oxford. He emigrated to South Africa, where he worked as a mining engineer, married, had a child, was widowed, and served in the Boer War. However, by the time war broke out in 1914 Francis Dyson was farming in Australia. He enlisted within days of the outbreak and sailed for Egypt on 20 October. He served in Gallipoli throughout the campaign and after further service in Egypt was posted to Europe in June 1916. Having spent three years almost constantly in action, he was killed by a shell at Villers Bretonneux on 24 April 1918. A shell exploded yards from him whilst he was taking an ammunition column up to the batteries. He was hit in the chest, fell from his horse and "died one minute later".
After the war, in memory of their nephew, Walter and Marion Rowley paid for a memorial shrine to the forty-eight men of Meanwood who'd lost their lives in the war. Eleanor continued to live with the Rowleys. She married in 1927 and died at the age of 30 in 1935.
We have very little personal information about Francis Dyson but it's worth noting that his daughter's full names were Emma Winifred Eleanor, Emma having been the name of his mother who died when he was born. And, the name of his farm in Konagaderra, Victoria, was Alder Hill, the name of his uncle and aunt's house in Yorkshire. So this rolling stone, whose life took him from Riga to England, South Africa, Australia, Egypt, Gallipoli and France, remained sentimentally attached to his mother and to the home of his youth.

LOVED HUSBAND OF EMOND
AND DEAR DADDY OF ROLLO

PRIVATE TASMAN FOSTER BARKER

Emond, Tasman Foster Barker's young widow, made sure that even in far-off France people should know that he was her "loved husband" and the "dear daddy of Rollo". Emond and Tasman married in 1916 and James Rollo was born the same year. And in November that same year, Tasman, a coach builder from Colac, Victoria, enlisted. He left Australia on board HMS Ballarat on 19 February 1917. Two months later, on 25 April 1917, Ballarat was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Cornwall, sinking the next day. However, all 1,752 passengers and crew survived.
Tasman died on 21 April 1918 of wounds received in the first battle of Villers Bretonneux. His brother Rollo, a Second Lieutenant in the Australian Heavy Artillery had been killed two months earlier in a motorbike accident in France.

PERSTA ATQUE OBDURA

SECOND LIEUTENANT FRANK COLLETT REEVE BEECHEY

Persta atque obdura, be steadfast and endure - if ever there was an appropriate inscription for a family this is it. Mrs Amy Beechey, the widow of a Church of England clergyman and Frank Beechey's mother, lost five of her eight sons in the war, and of the three who returned one was crippled for life.
Frank Beechey was injured by a shell that blew his legs off. A witness described how he lay out in No-Man's-Land from "dawn to dusk" until a doctor was able to crawl out and administer morphine. Frank was 30 and was the second of the brothers to die.
His older brother, Barnard who was 38, had been killed a year earlier, on the first day of the Battle of Loos, 25 September 1915. Barnard had gone to France in July, reporting to his mother that he had been sick three times during the Channel crossing. On 5 September he told his mother: "I really am all right and don't mind the life only we all wish the thing was over, and those who have been out the longest wish so most of all." Three weeks later "the thing was over" for Barnard, killed in a charge at the German trenches. His body was never found and he is commemorated on the Ploegsteert Memorial.
Harold Beechey was the third brother to die. He had emigrated to Australia in 1913 and was serving with the 48th Battalion Australian Infantry when he was killed at Bullecourt on 10 April 1917. Enquiries from the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau elicited the information from a witness that,

"We were digging a dug-out on the night of April 1917 on the railway line between Lagnicourt and Bullecourt when the Germans sent a couple of shells over and he was severely wounded about the body and legs. He died two hours afterwards and was unconscious most of the time".

The eldest of the brothers, Charles, was the next to die. Aged 36 in 1914, he was initially too old for military service and joined up later than his brothers. He was serving in East Africa with the Royal Fusiliers when he died of wounds caused by machine gun fire on 20 October 1917. He was 39. He is buried in Dar-es-Salaam War Cemetery where his inscription reads: Requiescat in pace.
Two months later, on 29 December 1917, Leonard died of wounds in hospital in Rouen having been gassed and wounded at Bourlon Wood. His last letter to his mother, from his hospital bed, concluded with the words: "My darling mother, don't feel like doing much yet. Lots of love, Len".
In April 1918, Mrs Beechey was invited to be presented to King George V and Queen Mary when they visited Lincoln Guildhall. When thanked for her sacrifice she is reputed to have told the Queen, "It was no sacrifice, Ma'am, I did not give them willingly". However, Michael Walsh, whose book on the brothers, Brothers in War reports the meeting with the King and Queen only has this to say: "if she felt anger she did not show it when their Majesties thanked her for her sacrifice". And in fact, Lady Cecilia Roberts, the local MP's wife who Amy Beechey had thanked for helping her secure a pension, replied, "you are very brave and very gracious over all that concerns you - you set a great example to us all".
Michael Walsh describes 'persta atque obdura' as the Beechey family motto, a fact confirmed by the Reverend Canon St Vincent Beechey, founder of Rossall School in Fleetwood, in his book 'Rossall School its Rise and Progress', 1894. The quotation comes from the Satires of Horace Book II, Satire V, line 39.

HE DIED FOR ITS COLOURS
AND SHED HIS HEART'S BLOOD FOR THE FLAG

PRIVATE LAURENCE RALPH STONE

Private Stone's inscription illustrates the impact of patriotic propaganda. Recruiting posters encouraged men to rally round the flag, whilst poetry from the South African War still cast its spell. Poems and Songs on the South African War (1901), featured an anonymous verse, The Union Jack, with the lines:

It's only a small piece of bunting,
It's only an old coloured rag,
Yet thousands have died for its honour,
And shed their best blood for the flag.

All this sentiment played into Private Stone's inscription but whereas for a soldier, 'the colours' usually mean the regimental flag, here it's the red, white and blue of the union flag around which, "Britons conquer, or die, but ne'er yield".

And how did Private Stone "shed his heart's blood"? A friend, reported:
"I saw him killed on the 30.12.17 at Warneton. He was caught by a shell and killed instantly. We were in the line at the time. I knew him very well, I went to school with him at Callie, W.A. His people are box manufacturers there. He was buried on New Year's morning at a little cemetery at Red Lodge near Warneton, I saw his grave, which was marked with a cross bearing his number, name and unit.
Pte. H Campbell 6423"
Report Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau files

WHAT IS TO BE WILL BE
DEARLY LOVED SON OF
MARGARET AND SAMUEL HOGAN

PRIVATE GEORGE HENRY HOGAN

It was one of Abraham Lincoln's maxims that, "What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree". And what was 'to be' for Margaret and Samuel Hogan? Their son, George, wounded on 11 April 1918 by a bomb from an aeroplane, died of his wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station the next day. The details are given in the Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau Files, "bomb wounds buttock punctuating abdomen arm right".

HE BORE HIS PAIN
HOW HE SUFFERED
NONE CAN TELL
PEACEFULLY AT REST

GUNNER JOHN WILLIAM CHARLES MCGREGOR

From his epitaph, I thought Gunner McGregor must have died of terrible wounds nineteen days after the end of the war so I was a bit surprised to discover that he'd died of broncho-pneumonia, probably brought on by influenza as was the case with so many casualties of the Spanish Flu epidemic. However, it certainly made me think of what it must have been like to die of pneumonia in the days when there was little that medicine could do to help.
McGregor was admitted to 41st Stationary Hospital on 30 November and died the same day. Unfortunately, the clerk who typed up the report incorrectly read died as disch. (discharged) so no notification was sent to his next-of-kin. The mistake wasn't realised until the end of January 1919 when a telegram arrived at the London office of the Australian Red Cross asking for information with the comment that, "he is said to be wounded and in hospital in London". Unfortunately, he wasn't.
John McGregor's elder brother, Osswild Daniel, had been killed in action on the 5 November 1916.

AN AUSTRALIAN HERO

PRIVATE HAROLD ROY BENZLEY

This Australian hero, a clerk from Sunbury, Victoria, enlisted on 12 May 1915 and embarked from Melbourne for Egypt on 16 July 1915. He was on board the Southland when it was torpedoed in the Aegean by UB-14 whilst en route to Gallipoli from Egypt on 2 September 1915.
He eventually landed on Gallipoli and his war record reads:

"admitted to 6th Australian Field Ambulance, Anzac, 31 October 1915 (influenza); transferred to 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station, Anzac, 3 November 1915 (enteric); evacuated and disembarked Alexandria, 9 November 1915; admitted to No 15 General Hospital, Alexandria, 9 November 1915; proceeded to England, 16 November 1915; admitted to County of London War Hospital, Epsom, England, 27 November 1915. Proceeded overseas to France, 7 June 1916; marched into 2nd Australian Division Base Depot, Etaples, France, 8 June 1916."

Two months later he was "admitted at this station (3rd Casualty Clearing Station) 6th August 1916 suffering from gun shot wounds head, with compound fracture of skull. He died the same day".

A hero may be defined as someone who is admired for their courage and their brave deeds, but never forget R.C. Sherriff's definition in Journey's End. The main character, Captain Stanhope, is perceived to be a hero but as he openly confesses to Hibbert, "Sometimes I feel I could just lie down on this bed and pretend I was paralysed or something - and couldn't move - and just lie there till I died - or was dragged away." But others are sticking it so we have to too. "Don't you think it worth standing in with men like that? - when you know they all feel like you do - in their hearts - and just go on sticking it because they know it's - it's the only thing a decent man can do."

Brave deeds or sticking it - either way, those who fought deserve the appellation 'hero'.

GOOD OLD FRANK
AU REVOIR FROM ALL AT HOME

PRIVATE FRANK STRANGER

Private Stranger was admitted to hospital on 15 March 1918 suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the head, legs and right forearm. He died of wounds eight days later. He was one of three brothers originally from Guernsey who were all killed within two months of each other: Frank on 23 March, George on 11 April and Harry on 11 May.

DEAR OSCAR
ALWAYS REMEMBERED

PRIVATE OSCAR GRIMES

Oscar Grimes was reported wounded, missing in action on 5 November 1916 during the Battle of Flers. A month later his mother, Martha Grimes, instituted a Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau search. Confirmation of Oscar's death didn't come until August 1917 but by this time Martha Grimes was dead having died two weeks after instituting the search. Since Oscar's father was already dead it was his brother who chose his inscription, "Dear Oscar always remembered".

OUR IDEAL SON
A GENTLE, TENDER, BROTHER
A STEADFAST FRIEND

PRIVATE HAROLD MARCUS SARGANT

According to Harold Sargant's father, who completed the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia, his son "volunteered to restore the line of communication in the big push under very heavy shell fire and his officer said he just completed it when a shell burst and killed him."
Sargant, whose qualities are beautifully described on his headstone, was a farmer before he enlisted in 1916. He embarked from Australia on 9 November that year and was "21 years all but 12 days" when killed in action on 4 April 1918.

A CHEERFUL VOICE
A SMILING FACE
ALAS NO ONE
CAN FILL HIS PLACE

PRIVATE HORACE HOBAN SIMPSON

Horace Simpson was a 21-year-old Labourer from Prahran, Victoria who enlisted on 10 August 1915. He embarked from Australia on 15 September 1915 and served with the 5th Battalion Australian Infantry who were at that time on Gallipoli. Withdrawn from Gallipoli in December 1915 the battalion was sent to Egypt to defend the Suez Canal. In March 1916 it was transferred to the Western Front. Over the next two years the battalion saw action at Pozieres on the Somme, at Ypres both in the winter of 1916-17 and then later that spring and was involved in the German Spring Offensive of 1918. After three years of action Simpson was killed on the second day of the great Allied offensive launched near Amiens on 8 August 1918 that eventually brought the war to an end.

BRIGHT, INTELLIGENT LAD
WAS RESPECTED & LOVED BY
ALL HIS REGIMENT

LANCE CORPORAL SYDNEY JAMES ARMSTRONG SAWYERS

This inscription has the ring of a letter of condolence from Sawyers' senior officer. However, unlike many letters, this sounds as though the officer actually knew Sawyers and recognised him to be a "bright, intelligent lad".
Sawyers' mother filled in the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia and she described him as a photographer who had also worked in "postal services". Other sites describe him as a miner. He lived in Norseman Western Australia, a gold mining town, so Sawyers certainly could at one time have been involved in the gold industry. He enlisted on 5 July 1915, embarked for Europe on 1 October that year and died of wounds just under a year later on 7 September 1915 at No. 49 Casualty Clearing Station, Contay.

OUR LAD
RUDDY OF HAIR
AND STRONG OF LIMB

PRIVATE LEWIS NORMAN SHEPHERD

This is such a wonderful inscription: tender, proud and direct. It gives us a vivid image of this red-headed, well built, twenty-one-year-old butcher from Penguin in Tasmania who died of wounds at a Casualty Clearing Station in Puchevillers. Lewis Shepherd's brother, Ernest Victor Shepherd, was killed in action at Armentieres five months later on 2 January 1917.

DAD'S & MUM'S DARLING
AT REST

PRIVATE HORACE WILLIAM BROWN

In the space beside the question'What was his Calling?",on the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia, Private Brown's father has written, 'State School Head Teacher'. Horace Brown was 23. It might seem unusual for someone to be a head teacher at so young an age but Brown had been teaching for eight years, as his father explains with I imagine no little pride:
"Obtained State School merit certificate at age of 13 years. Appointed junior teacher at age 15 years. Appointed Head Teacher at Baringhupp* East State School, Victoria at age of 20 years."
* It's difficult to read this word but I think it says Baringhup

A MOTHER'S SACRIFICE

FRANCIS JOHN COOMBES

Jack Coombes, a painter from Newtown, Sydney, New South Wales, was born in England in Luton, Bedfordshire. He emigrated to Australia with his parents in 1898 when he was 6. I can't tell whether his father was still alive at the time of his death, nor whether he had any brothers or sisters. It was his mother who was described as his next of kin, she also filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia and instituted a search via the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau. While two witnesses say that he was sniped "through the forehead, death being instantaneous", another man, who looks as though his name was Company Sergeant Major H.S.A. Creehy, has another tale to tell; you can decide whose is the most likely.

"Informant states that on 31/9/18 the Battalion was holding the line in a trench at Villers Bretonneux. About mid-day when they were resting in a trench Coombes was hit by a shell and died about two minutes afterwards. Informant was with him when he died. He was conscious and asked informant to remember him to his mother. Informant saw him fall, being only about 4 yards away from him at the time and had been speaking to him just before. Informant added that Coombes was a fine fellow and was well liked by his men. If Coombes' mother cares to write to him he will go and see her if she lives in Sydney."

I have a feeling that the informant (Creehy?) was a very kind man and that he possibly knew there was a close relationship between mother and son. If so he hoped her son's 'last words' would bring her comfort.

THE SUPREME SACRIFICE

CORPORAL ROBERT JAMES ANDREW

Corporal Robert James Andrew was killed in action at the retaking of the summit of Mont St Quentin on 1 September 1918. The next day the Australian Infantry took Peronne. These were among the finest actions of the Australian forces during the whole war and their casualties were very high.
Corporal Andrew's wife instigated an Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau search for her husband. The results show how difficult it was to ever ascertain exactly what had happened to a soldier. Added to this was the fact that a Private GV Andrews, who also served with the 24th Infantry, in the same Company, was killed during the same battle on the same day. However, it seems as though witnesses were all speaking about the same man: "Andrew was from Victoria, tall, very thin, fair hair, about 26 years" [Sgt JH Bond 14.11.18.] but there is not much agreement about he died.
"I didn't see Andrew, who was a M/Gunner in my D.XV. killed instantly by a m.g.bullet through the head at Mont St Quentin about 4 pm."
"Andrews was in the trench waiting to go over when he was hit by a piece of shell and killed right out. I saw this."
"He was killed with four others by a shell in the dugout ... It happened about 4.10 pm before our hop over, and Fritz was busy strafing us at the time."
"I saw Morris D.Coy. S/B and Andrew D.XVI both killed instantly by the same shell alongside of me at Mont St Quentin about 6 pm in front line of trenches before the hop over."
"Casualty was advancing at Mont St Quentin when a machine gun bullet entered his side killing him instantly."

Corporal Andrew's wife, Rhoda, used the title of Sir John Arkwright's famous poem, 'The Supreme Sacrifice' for her husband's headstone inscription. The poem is much better known as the hymn 'O Valiant Hearts', which for many years was sung at Remembrance Services until its sentiments went out of fashion.

QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA
BEHOLD I COME QUICKLY

STAFF NURSE MYRTLE ELIZABETH WILSON

Myrtle Elizabeth Wilson was born in Australia in 1877 where her parents had been living for ten years. A trained nurse, she joined Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service early in 1915 and was sent to Europe in April. That winter she caught pneumonia. Her decline was noted in the official diary of the Matron-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders, Maud McCarthy.
9 December:
Miss Lowndes dangerously ill. Miss Wilson and Miss Donaldson both very ill also.
19 December:
Miss Wilson, Australian, pneumonia, DI [dangerously ill] list - people in Australia, WO informed, and cousin in England.
23 December
Telephone message from 14 General Hospital saying Miss Wilson, Australian on Q Reserve, condition critical. Informed WO. Later (message) to say she had died 7.30 am.

Myrtle Wilson's funeral was held the next day, Christmas Eve. Maud McCarthy made sure that she attended and was furious to discover that no one had done anything about publicising the funeral so that there were very few nurses present. She felt very keenly that people should have had the opportunity "of paying a last respect to one who had come so far and who was among strangers."

Myrtle's inscription was confirmed by her sister May. The family's address was The Roses, Chelmer, Brisbane, Queensland, hence the first line. The second line, 'Behold I come quickly' is a line, repeated several times, from the New Testament Book of Revelation Chapter 22:
Behold I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.
verse 7
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
verse 12
He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Maud McCarthy's Official Diary as the Matron-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, [WO95/3989 The National Archives], has been transcribed by Sue Light @Scarletfinders. She has created the most wonderful resource for which I am very grateful.

KAERE SON VI MODES SNART

PRIVATE KRISTIAN VOGNSEN

Private Vognsen's inscription is in Danish but the database can't cope with the inclusion of the Danish accents on the words 'son' and 'modes'. The inscription was confirmed by his father, who still lived in Denmark, and it means, 'Dear son we will soon meet again'. Kristian Vognes, who descibed himself as a seaman on his attestation papers, emigrated to Australia when he was 18 and a half. He was just 21 and a half when he was killed at Gallipoli on 26 June 1915.
There had always been a small Danish presence in Australia: seamen, gold prospectors and former soldiers following the disbandment of the Danish army in Schleswig-Holstein after the war of 1849-51. Prussia's annexation of these two provinces after the war of 1864 further fuelled Danish emigration, as well as a dislike of Prussian aggression. This meant that in 1914 there was great support among the Danish community for Australian participation in the First World War.

BELOVED HUSBAND OF
M.E.VICARY
OF RICCARTON, NEW ZEALAND

PRIVATE HENRY WALTER VICARY

It is rare to see the words New Zealand in a personal inscription, not because few New Zealanders died in the war but because the New Zealand dead were not allowed headstone inscriptions. It was all a question of equality. The War Graves Commission made much of the fact that all the dead were to be treated equally whether they were generals or privates, princes or labourers. However, it then decided, primarily as a concession to the Roman Catholic community, that next-of-kin could be allowed to choose and pay for a brief personal inscription. The Canadian government felt that this was deeply divisive and made the decision that it would pay for all inscriptions. The New Zealand government also felt it was divisive and so made the decision that there would be no personal inscriptions on their graves.
Henry Vicary served in the Australian army. The family originally came from Ilfracombe in Devon but Henry was born "at sea to British parents". By 1914 Henry was a sailor, carpenter, labourer and engine driver living in Narradora, New South Wales. He was killed in action at the battle of Lone Pine sometime between 6th and 9th August 1915.
I don't know when he married, who he married or how the New Zealand connection comes about but by the time Henry Vicary's widow came to confirm his headstone inscription she was living at 9 Bowen St, Riccarton, New Zealand.
Henry's half brother, William Dallin Vicary, was killed in Mesoptamia on 8 March 1916 and is commemorated on the Basra Memorial.

TYDI GAN HYNNY
GODDEF GYSTUDD
MEGIS MILWR DA
I JESU GRIST

PRIVATE TOMMY THOMAS

Private Tommy Thomas was a carpenter from Mackay, Northern Queensland. He was born in Llanfyrnach, Pembrokeshire, Wales, where his parents lived until after the war. He enlisted in the Australian Infantry on 9 March 1915 and embarked for Europe on the 29 June that year. He died of wounds in hospital in Rouen on 15 September 1916.
His Welsh inscription comes from the English-Welsh Duoglott Bible, from the Second Epistle of Timothy, Chapter 2 verse 3:
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

LOVED BROTHER
OF PETER, FERG.
IG, DOT AND MOLLIE

LANCE CORPORAL WILLIAM JOHN SULLIVAN

As Trooper William John Sullivan's parents were dead his sister Margaret was his next of kin. She chose his inscription - naming his five siblings - and signed the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia. Sullivan had been a bank clerk in Coolac, NSW before he volunteered under the alias of William John Monoghan on 24 August 1914. He was killed on 29 June 1915 on what later became known as Pope's Hill.

HE GAVE UP ALL HE LOVED
TO FIGHT FOR
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD

SAPPER EDWIN ALLEN LE LEU

Edwin Le Leu was a boat builder from Semaphore, a seaside suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. His older brother Sapper Frank Le Leu was a motor mechanic from the same town. Frank Le Leu died on 31 May 1917 and is buried in Strand Military Cemetery, Hainaut, Belgium. He and his brother have identical headstone inscriptions:
He gave up all he loved
To fight for
The freedom of the world.

GAVE UP THE YEARS TO BE

SERJEANT NORMAN HAMILTON REED

Serjeant Reed's inscription comes from the first verse of Rupert Brooke's sonnet The Dead:

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

The 'Particulars required for the Roll of Honour of Australia in the Memorial War Museum' provide researchers with much valuable information on Australia's casualties. Serjeant Reed's father completed his form, combining the poignant detail that his son was 23 years (and 2 days) when he died with the biographical details that he:
"Enlisted Sept 1914. Embarked with No. 1 Stationary Hospital Unit from Melbourne 4th Dec 1914 was on Lemnos Island and at Gallipoli, and in England with the 1st Aust Gen Hospital at Dartford, England for a short time - afterwards went to France & joined the 1st Field Ambulance. Was an athlete, swimmer, cricketer,, Lacrosse & football. Had passed examinations (3) in the St John's Ambulance Assocn. hence being drafted to the AMC when he enlisted."
Although this form records that he died of wounds at Lijssenthoek it gives no details. These come from Lijssenthoek's own hospital records: "shrapnel wounds on abdomen and back at No. 2 Canadian Casualty Clearing Station".

THESE ARE DEEDS
WHICH SHOULD NOT PASS AWAY
NAMES THAT MUST NOT WITHER

PRIVATE STANLEY EDGAR STEPHEN RAVELL

Sidney Ravell was a labourer from Coogee, NSW. He enlisted in Holsworthy, now a suburb of Sydney, embarked for Europe on 20 December 1915 and died of wounds in hospital in Lijssenthoek on 29 October 1917.
His mother confirmed his inscription, which comes from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:

But these are deeds which should not pass away,
And names that must not wither, though the earth
Forgets her empires with a just decay,,
The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth;
The high, the mountain-majesty of worth
Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,
And from its immortality look forth
In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow,
Imperishably pure beyond all things below.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Canto the Third LXVII
Lord Byron

Sidney Ravell's foster-brother, Michael Noble Smith was killed in action on 19 July 1916. He is buried in Ration Farm Military Cemetery, La Chapelle-D'Armentieres and his headstone carries the same personal inscription as Sidney Ravell's.

MY HEART ALWAYS SAD
MY SORROW GREAT
MY LOSS HARD TO BEAR

PRIVATE ALFRED ERNEST ELDER

Private Elder's next of kin was his sister, Mary, and it was she who chose his inscription since it appears that both their parents were dead. It is not a quotation but a straightforward description of the sister's grief.

FOR DUTY
TO KING AND COUNTRY

TROOPER JAMES ANDREW BURROUGH

James Burrough died of para-typhoid fever in hospital in Mudros Bay on the island of Lemnos. Paratyphoid, previously known as enteric fever, was, until the invention of antibiotics, the great military killer caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi.
Burrough was an engine driver from Adelaide. Born and educated in South Africa, he served with the Uitenhage Volunteers on the side of the British during the Boer War. He arrived in Australia in 1908 aged 29. Four months after the outbreak of war, in December 1914, he volunteered although at 35 he was not expected to. He embarked from Australia on 12 February 1915, his eventual destination being Gallipoli.
At the time of his death Burrough was married with two small sons. His wife Laura chose his inscription, emphasising his continuing loyalty to King and Country. She gave her address as: Lemnos, Randolph Avenue, Fullarton, South Australia, Laura Burrough had named her house after the island where her husband was buried.

HIS LAST WORDS TO FRIENDS
I WILL DO MY BEST
WHEN I GET THERE

GUNNER GEORGE FREDERICK PATTEN

Charles and Mary Patten had three sons. They all served in the war, only one returned. George, a railway fireman, was killed in Flanders on 28 August 1918. His brother Trooper Charles Douglas Patten, Australian Light Horse, died as a prisoner of war in Turkey on 9 February 1917.
Their sister, Mrs W.E.Webb, instituted a Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau search for Charles. This revealed that he had been captured at Katia on 9 August 1916 and initially interned in Afion Kara Hissar. When he died six months later he was in Angora Paludean Cachexia. One of the witnesses informed the Red Cross "he was in & out of hospital every week at Angora, suffering from malaria - he was game to the last".
In answer to another query Trooper G.A. Roberts wrote: "We are not allowed to attend the burial of a fellow prisoner. When they die in hospital they are taken to a room in the hospital and washed and then conveyed on a stretcher to the hospital grave ward and buried by Turks (shrouds are unnecessary luxuries according to these people) there is no mark to show who is buried in certain places. We know they are English that is all."
After the war the bodies of all allied prisoners of war buried in Anatolia were exhumed and reinterred in Baghdad North Gate Cemetery. The graves are unidentified but the names of the dead are recorded at the cemetery. However, access to the cemetery is difficult at the present time and in acknowledgement of this the War Graves Commission have compiled a two-volume Roll of Honour of the casualties either buried or simply commemorated in Iraq, which can be inspected in the Commission's head office in Maidenhead.

AFTER LIFE'S FITFUL FEVER
HE SLEEPS WELL

PRIVATE JAMES WALTER COOPER

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further.
Macbeth Act 3 Sc. 2
William Shakespeare

James Cooper was a fireman from Southern Cross, Yilgarn, Western Australia who emigrated from England in 1912 when he was 32. He enlisted in 1916 and embarked for Europe on 23 November 1916. Born in Reigate, Surrey he served for 12 years in the Royal Field Artillery before moving to Australia.
His wife, Edith, chose his inscription. Macbeth is speaking to his wife telling her that Duncan the king is dead, he has killed him. However, one gets the sense that even in his, the murderer's mind, there is an element of envy for the freedom from fear and danger in which Duncan now rests.
At the time Mrs Cooper confirmed the inscription she was living in St George's Hostel in Katanning, Western Australia. This imposing building was built in 1913 to house itinerant workers drawn to the town by the booming agricultural prosperity of the area.

IN MEMORY OF THE DEAR SON
OF MR. AND MRS. HILLS
OF ALBANY, AUSTRALIA

PRIVATE CHARLES HILLS

Charles Hills was born in England, in Norwood, Surrey where his father was a carrier on a farm. The family emigrated to Australia in 1911 and settled in Albany. Charles enlisted on 4 March 1916 and sailed for England on 11 August that year. He took part in the battles of Pozieres and Bullecourt, where he was wounded on 11 April 1917 and spent three months in hospital in England. Returning he fought in the battle of Bapaume and was killed in action on 29 March 1918.

IN MEMORY OF DEAR BOB
SON OF MR. AND MRS. W.H. GOODWIN
COOMA, N.S.W.

SERJEANT ROBERT BOYD GOODWIN

Bob Goodwin was a draper from Cooma, the main town in the Monaro region of New South Wales. He was killed in action on 11 March 1917 and originally buried at map reference 57c.R.3.c.5.8 before being reinterred in Lesboeufs in July 1919.

27 YEARS
BELOVED SON OF
C. AND E. GREEN
BURRA, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

LANCE CORPORAL HAROLD TEMPERLEY GREEN

"Green was badly wounded - shot through the head and fell beside me. After being bandaged he was carried to the Dressing Station and on their return the bearers told me he was dead."
Private J. Davy to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau 14.10.1918
"I saw above named on a stretcher just after he had been wounded (about 9 pm) at Merris. I spoke to him, S/B Wright (No 452) of same Battalion) bandaged him up. The face (mouth portion) had been blown in."
L/Cpl J McFarlane to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau 21.10.1918
"I saw Pte. (sic) J Green fatally wounded by shell while holding the lines in front of Merris on the 30th July 1918 ... The ground was held."
L/Cpl W Bartch 14.10.1918
"3333 Pte. (sic) Green H.T. 10th Bn. died of wounds at our Dressing Station Borre at 5.45.a.m. on 30/7/18. Wound received was S.W.skull compound fracture. He was unconcious on admission and died soon after. Burial took place at Military Cemetery Borre same day."/ Signed by Major, Acting CO 1st Australian Field Ambulance, [signature unreadable]

Harold Green's elder brother Edward Owen Green "died of accidental injuries" near Tripoli in Syria, according to his father when he filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia. Edward Green is buried in Bierut War Cemetery in the Lebanese Republic. His inscription, which was signed for by his father rather than by his mother as Harold's was, reads:
Beloved son of
C. and E. Green
Of World's End
South Australia.

DEARLY BELOVED SON OF
MR AND MRS ROBERT ANDERSON
COOMINYA, QUEENSLAND

GUNNER JAMES ANDERSON

James Anderson was a farmer from the small community of Coominya in Queensland, which even today has scarcely more than 1,000 residents. He enlisted on 9 September 1915 and embarked for Europe on 11 May 1916. He died of shrapnel wounds to his left leg in No 10 Casualty Clearing Station, Lijssenthoek, Belgium.

BEHIND ALL SHADOWS
STANDETH GOD

LIEUTENANT COLONEL ROBERT GARTSIDE

Fifty-two-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Gartside was mortally wounded as he rose to lead an attack on the Turkish trenches during the Second Battle of Krithia. He is quoted as having just said, "Come on boys, I know it's deadly, but we must get on," when he was hit in the abdomen by machine gun bullets.
His inscription sounds as though it must be a quotation. It could be a reference to the hymn 'Once to Every Man and Nation'. The hymn's sentiment would have been seen to be appropriate:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Offering each the bloom or blight;
And the choice goes by for ever
'Twixt that darkness and that light.

With the last verse concluding:

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.

This looked to me as though it was the closest we were going to get to the source of the epitaph. However, I put the phrase into Google in inverted commas and came up with a photograph taken by E.R.Pretyman, 1870-1930, held in the Archives Office of Tasmania, which shows a large mausoleum with the words 'Light evermore, behind all shadows standeth God' written in huge letters across the pediment. Could this be the source of the inscription and if so is there any connection between Robert Gartside and this mausoleum, which unfortunately isn't identified?

MY DARLING

PRIVATE DAVID HEATHCOTE MELROSE ROBERTSON

"My darling" not our darling, although David Robertson's father was still alive. It was David's mother, Mrs Emma Jane Roberston, who filled in the form confirming the inscription and she wrote "My darling". Father, Mr James Robertson, didn't die until 1950 and he's buried under a headstone which describes him as the beloved father of David, but nevertheless his son's headstone inscription only reads "My darling".
David Robertson was a motor mechanic from Ballarat, Victoria. He enlisted at the age of 18 in July 1915, and was sent to Gallipoli in August where he was wounded and spent some time in hospital on Malta. After the evacuation from Gallipoli in January 1916, the Battalion regrouped in Egypt and then were sent to France in March where they took part in the Somme campaign. In 1917 were sent to the Ypres front. David was killed in action at Zonnebeke during the Battle of Passchendale on 22/23 September. According to his mother, on the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia, he was "twenty and one week" when he died, so not 21 as it says on the War Graves' records. Initially buried without being identified, his body was later exhumed from map reference 28.J.@.d.7.2, identified by the clothing and correspondence on it, and reburied in Sanctuary Wood Cemetery.

NO REVEILLE
AND NO MORNING GUN
SHALL EVERMORE WAKEN HIM

CAPTAIN ANDREW GEORGE CHRISTIAN

This inscription, chosen by Captain Christian's wife, comes from a poem written at the time of the Boer War by William Alexander, the Protestant Primate of All Ireland. It's a long poem from which these are the relevant verses:

They who marched up the bluffs last stormy week,
Some of them, ere they reached the mountain's creek,
The wind of battle breathing on their cheek,
Suddenly laid them down.

Like sleepers - not like those whose race is run -
Fast, fast asleep amid the cannon's roar,
Them no reveille and no morning gun
Shall ever waken more.

The morning gun was fired at the same time as the first bugle note of reveille and summoned the soldier from sleep.

A POPULAR OFFICER
DEEPLY MOURNED

LIEUTENANT CLARENCE WILLIAM WOLFENDEN

Clarence Wolfenden was a consistent high achiever at every stage of his short career. An artillery officer, he was killed when the Turkish guns found the range of his guns on Plateau 400. His mother, a widow, chose his inscription.

MATE O' MINE

MAJOR JOHN EDWIN SERGEANT

Major Sergeant was killed by a shell high above Anzac Cove on the first day of the Gallipoli landings. The men of the 8th Battalion Australian Infantry, led by Colonel William Bolton, captured what became known as Bolton's Ridge on this first day. A photograph of Sergeant's grave at the top of a steep precipice with the sea far below illustrates the Australians' amazing achievement. The photograph was taken by Lieutenant Jack Duffy and can be seen on Trevor Henshaw's blog Original graves at Gallipoli. However, they never managed to make much further progress and during the entire nine months the Allies were on the peninsular this position always remained close to the Turkish front line.
Major Sergeant's wife chose his epitaph. It comes from the song Mate o' Mine: music written by the British composer, conductor and violinist, Percy Elliott, words by Leslie Cooke.

We set out together, mate o' mine,
When youth was in its prime,
Life - the path that lay before us,
Life - the hill we had to climb.

We neither of us knew the road,
How long the journey, great the load;
Nor I how deep the debt I owed
To God for mate o' mine!

We set out together, mate o'mine;
We've wended road and hill;
Now it's homeward through the valley
We must wander at God's will.

We neither of us fear the gloam,
Love still shall light the path we roam;
Should you be the last returning Home,
I'll greet thee, mate o' mine!

John Sergeant was 45, a grazier and vigneron who had served in the South African War. He re-enlisted as a Captain on 28 August 1914 and embarked for Egypt on 19 October. It was his wife, Annie, who in the words of the song became "the last returning Home". Her choice of inscription, and the song it came from, sadly encapsulating the unknown journey you set out on at the beginning of married life.

THE HOURS I'VE SPENT
WITH THEE DEAR HEART
ARE AS A STRING OF PEARLS
TO ME

PRIVATE FRED HAMPTON

This inscription comes from The Rosary, a hugely popular romantic song about loss and the acceptance of loss, written in America in 1898 by Ethelbert Nevin and Robert Cameron Rogers. It became one of the most popular songs of the early twentieth century, and was made even more popular by Florence L Barclay's deeply romantic novel of the same name in which the song plays a central part.
Barclay's book was published in 1909 and immediately became a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic; by 1924 it had sold a million copies.

The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me.
I count them over every one apart,
My rosary.
Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer,
To still a heart in absence wrung.
I tell each bead unto the end - and there
A cross is hung.
Oh memories that bless - and burn!
Oh, barren gain - and bitter loss!
I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn
To kiss the cross,
Sweetheart,
To kiss the cross.

Fred Hampton's widow, Eleanor, chose his inscription. Her husband had been killed during the night of 3 July whilst part of a working party repairing the wire out in no-man's-land. Initially no one knew what had happened to him and Eleanor initiated a search by the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Bureau. One wonders how much of what the Red Cross found out was relayed to her. Witnesses describe how Fred Hampton was "struck by a shell which carried away the lower part of his face". The witnesses then disagree about whether "he lived only a few minutes" or was "taken to a dressing station where he died after about 30 minutes". The fact that he is buried in a battlefield cemetery not one associated with an aid post, Field Ambulance or Casualty Clearing Station, inclines me to think he only lived a few minutes.

IN MEMORY OF
MY DEARLY LOVED ONLY CHILD
MARYBOROUGH, VIC. A.

LANCE CORPORAL HARLEY BESWICK CROSS

"My dearly loved only child." Note that Lance Corporal Cross's father uses the word 'my' not 'our'. This is because Frederick Harley Cross was a widower and now his only child was dead.

BORN
IN BRIGHT SOUTH AUSTRALIA
DIED DOING HIS DUTY

PRIVATE WILLIAM CARL MEYER

I completely misread this inscription thinking that bright was an adjective describing South Australia. I rather liked the idea that William Meyer's parents wanted to contrast the sunny land of his birth with the rain and muddy fields of Flanders where he died. But I was completely wrong because Bright is a proper noun, the name of the town where he was born.
William Meyer's great-great niece has uploaded photographs and information about him to the RSL Virtual War Memorial, which tells us more about this farmer from the township of Hilltown, near Clare, who died in Belgium "doing his duty". However, it doesn't mention the fact that whilst he gave his religion on his enlistment papers as Methodist, his father, Johann Heinrich Friedrich Meyer, had him buried under one of the War Graves Commissions' Jewish headstones, which are clearly marked with the star of David. One has to assume from his names that Johann Meyer was of German or Austrian extraction. Is this why he emphasised his son's Australian birth and commitment to duty on his headstone?

HE WENT
KNOWING HE WOULD NOT RETURN

PRIVATE ARCHIBALD GRAY HOSKING

Archibald Hosking was a sheep grazier and wheelwright in Queensland. Despite believing that he would not return, Archibald Hosking was a volunteer, there was no conscription in Australia. He enlisted on 26 April 1916, embarked for France on 7 September 1916 and died of wounds in a base hospital in Rouen on 20 May 1917.

A PURE KNIGHT OF GOD

SECOND LIEUTENANT GEORGE GORDON WATTS

It was Sir Galahad who was the perfect knight, who in Tennyson's poem could boast:
My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
It was because he was the perfect knight that he was permitted to achieve the grail quest. And it was as a pure knight that he died having achieved it.
Lieutenant Watts' father specifically uses the term 'knight' to describe his son, but the inscription definitely has resonances of Christ's teaching at the Sermon on the Mount:
Blest are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8
George Watts is commemorated on his parents' headstone in Payneham Cemetery, Adelaide with the inscription: 'A true knight of God'.

A MOTHER'S DARLING

CORPORAL WILLIAM JOHN SAVAGE

William Savage was a 25 year old labourer from Port Adelaide, South Australia who enlisted when the 27th Battalion was formed there in March 1915. The Battalion went to Gallipoli in September 1915 and then to France early in 1916. Savage was killed in their final action of the war, the attempt to break the Beaurevoir Line, Germany's last line of defence, the last strand of the Hindenburg Line. The fighting was ferocious despite the fact, or maybe because of the fact, that the end for Germany was so near. Savage was killed on the 3rd and the line was finally broken late on the evening of the 5th. With the Hindenburg Line breached, the high ground behind it captured, the ground before the Allies now lay open before them.
The war was virtually over but Mrs Savage's 'darling' was dead. I love these simple, unsophisticated inscriptions, they are so eloquent. The War Grave Commission's records indicate that both William Savage's parents were still alive but it is as his mother's darling that he is commemorated.

GREAT GRAND NEPHEW
TO MICHAEL DWYER
THE FAMOUS WICKLOW CHIEFTAIN

PRIVATE GERALD PATRICK HEAVEY

One hundred and twelve years after Michael Dwyer arrived in Australia having been deported from Ireland by the British as a nationalist rebel, his seventeen-year-old, Australian, great-grand nephew, Gerald Heavey, was killed in France fighting for the British. A hundred and twelve years is time enough to forget old scores but his parents made a point of recording the connection on their son's headstone. Yet all the evidence points to their son being keen to fight. Australia did not have conscription so he was a volunteer. However, at the age of 17 he was too young to have joined up, too young to be serving in France let alone too young to die.

HERE LIES
THE NOBLEST WORK OF GOD

PRIVATE HARLEY RANDOLPH SLOGGETT

"An honest man's the noblest work of God" according to Alexander Pope (1688-1744) who wrote in Epistle IV of An Essay on Man:
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Fiftly years later, Robert Burns quoted Pope in his own poem, The Cotter's Saturday Night:
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,
"An honest man's the noblest work of God;"
Private Sloggett, a draper and mercer from Manildra New South Wales, was killed by shellfire whilst making breakfast in his dugout:
"He was a signaller attached to A Co. at the time of his death. I was in the Intelligence Section. We were at Co. HQ at Broodseinde Ridge, in a dug out, on 21st Oct. when he was blown up by a shell and killed outright. I saw his body and buried it right there. I put a little cross on the grave".
Private Dabell to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau January 1918.
Both Sloggett's fate and the location of the grave were lost in the subsequent fighting, hence the Red Cross enquiry. However, it was redicovered in 1919 once the war was over and the task of recovering bodies from isolated and unidentified graves was begun. Sloggett was identified by his identity disc and reburied in Tyne Cot Cemetery.

AU REVOIR DARLING TOOTS
OUR LOVING
BRAVE TRUE HEARTED BOY
AN ANZAC

LIEUTENANT STEPHEN PHILIP BOULTON

"Died of wounds 3.10.18. 4 large splinters from gas shell (4.2) one splinter through right arm and 1 in groin. He never regained consciousness - buried by Chaplain Webb at Roisel near Peronne." This is the report given by Lieutenant Boulton's senior officer, Major Dodd, to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau. Others witnesses might have put it more delicately but they could not alter the facts.
Stephen Boulton was born in Australia in 1890. He enlisted in the ranks in January 1915 from his position as a clerk in the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. He served in Egypt and Gallipoli and in January 1918 received a commission. He was killed during a heavy bombardment of his artillery position.
In 1928 his mother donated his letters and postcards - all signed Toots - together with her official letters of condolence, and correspondence from the Imperial War Graves Commission, to the Australian War Memorial. This digitised correspondence can be read on-line providing a vivid record of one man's war. In the last line of his personal inscription, his mother describes him as an ANZAC, a member of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The term remains today, what it was then, a proud term for a superb body of soldiers.

A CROWDED HOUR
OF GLORIOUS LIFE
IS WORTH AN AGE
WITHOUT A NAME. MOTHER

PRIVATE HARRY STEANE

Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.

This poem, The Call, written by Thomas Osbert Mordaunt (1730-1809) was at one time thought to have been written by Sir Walter Scott who used it as the motto to Chapter XIII in Volume II of An Old Mortality. W.E.Henley (1849-1903) certainly attributed it to Scott when he used it on the title page of Lyra Heroica, his collection of poetry for boys.
The phrase, which Harry Steane's mother has slightly misquoted, was frequently used as a shorthand to describe a certain type of person. Vera Britain used it to describe Roland Leighton:
"I know you're the kind of person who would risk your life recklessly; I was talking to someone a short time ago and I said I thought you were the kind who believes in the 'one glorious hour of crowded life' (sic) theory; is it true?" (Vera Brittain, Chronicle of Youth, 1981, page 139).

Harry Steane, who was born in Warrington, England, enlisted on 5 October 1914 in Australia. After his death his mother wrote, "But the best of all in my idea is he volunteered for his country at once and was in the first landing on Gallipoli and I think that is a very great honour".

TO LIVE IN HEARTS
WE LEAVE BEHIND
IS NOT TO DIE

PRIVATE RAYMOND EVERITT BAYLISS

Raymond Bayliss was a twenty-three-year-old farmer from Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia whose brother, Ernest Foord, was also killed. Raymond's inscription is a quote from Hallowed Ground by Thomas Campbell (1777-1844).
But strew his ashes to the wind
Whose sword or voice has served mankind,
And is he dead, whose glorious mind
Lifts thine on high?
To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.

HIS LAST WORDS
"GOODBYE COBBER
GOD BLESS YOU"

TROOPER HAROLD RUSH

This is probably the most famous of all Australian inscriptions. They weren't Trooper Rush's dying words but they were spoken as he turned to a friend just before they charged the Turkish lines when he knew that death was virtually certain.
At dawn on 7 August 1915 the Australian Light Horse, dismounted and serving as infantry, were given instructions to charge The Nek, a promontory in Turkish hands. The plan was that there would be four waves, each of 150 men, who would 'hop the sacks', leave the trenches, at two-minute intervals. Waves one and two had been mown down almost to a man, Rush was in the third wave. The attack was called off before the fouth wave but not before well over 300 Australians, including Rush, had been killed or mortally wounded in less than eight minutes.
Harold Rush was an Englishman who had emigrated to Australia five years earlier when he was 18. Somehow his words must have been communicated to his parents back home in Bury St Edmunds, England, as it was his father who confirmed his inscription.

I COULD NOT LOVE YOU
DEAR SO WELL
LOVED I NOT HONOR MORE

SERJEANT HAROLD FULLER PARSONS

"I was with Parsons in a trench near Zonnebeke ... I had just moved away from him for a moment when some shrapnel burst over us, and I saw Parsons hit in the throat and killed immediately ... We lifted Parsons from the trench on to the parapet and covered him up with his groundsheet. He was buried at dusk just behind our trench. I don't know if a cross is put up to him." This eye-witness account was given to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau on 15 March 1918 by Private G Todd, in response to enquiries instigated by Sergeant Parson's wife.
It was Mrs Parsons who chose the inscription, the last two lines of 'To Lucasta, Going to the Wars' by Richard Lovelace 1618-1658.

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of that chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this incontancy is such
As thou too shalt adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.

BOYS, YE FOUGHT
AS HEROES FIGHT
AND DIED AS MEN

PRIVATE ARTHUR JEFFERSON LANE

Arthur Jefferson Lane was killed on 25 April 1918; his twenty-year-old brother, William Gladstone Lane, was killed two days later on the 27th. William's body was never found so he has no grave. His name is commemorated on the memorial to the missing at Villers-Bretonneux. It was their father who confirmed Arthur's inscription. Initially I thought that the reference to 'boys' was a reference to all the Australian soldiers in that battle. Now I feel sure that the father was directly addressing his two sons. But it's true, all the Australians fought "like heroes fight" at Villers-Bretonneux between the 24th and the 27th of April 1918.

IT IS SAD BUT TRUE
I WONDER WHY
THE GOOD ARE ALWAYS
FIRST TO DIE

PRIVATE JOSEPH HILL

Joseph Hill was a 35 year old labourer from Aramac, Queensland, Australia, who enlisted in December 1915 and embarked for Europe in May 1916. It was his sister Jeannie who confirmed his inscription. It's a popular piece of verse that often appeared in the 'In Memorium' columns of local newspapers.

ONLY SON
R.I.P.

PRIVATE MICHAEL THOMAS MAHER

According to a file in the Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau, Private Maher was a stretcher bearer killed during the German attack on Villers Bretonneux. Four witnesses recalled that, whilst engaged in carrying wounded from the fighting to the Regimental Aid Post, he was hit in the temple and chest by a shell and killed outright. One witness mentioned that 'Mick' was "a very obliging chap, well thought of by his mates". In civilian life Michael Thomas Maher was a farmer, grazier, from Bethundra in New South Wales who had enlisted on 1 February 1916.

MY BELOVED SON

CORPORAL JR BISHOP

Both Corporal Bishop's parents were alive so, from the use of the personal pronoun 'my' as opposed to 'our', I assume that the inscription they chose is a quotation from the New Testament, Mark 1:11, when, following Christ's baptism, a voice came from heaven saying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased".
In the section that asks for further biographical details on the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia, Mr Bishop quotes from the letter of condolence he received from his son's Company Commander, Captain Adams: "I valued Corporal Bishop highly as one of the best men in the company as well as in the battalion - his men and his commander miss him - cheerful under the worst conditions - and a great help to the men who all deplore his death. I looked upon him as a personal friend and he was the most popular NCO in the platoon, probably in the whole company".

THE LORD GAVE AND
THE LORD HAS TAKEN AWAY
OUR DEAR NORMAN

PRIVATE NORMAN DONALD MCPHEE

Private McPhee's parents quote the Old Testament, Job 1 21-2. On receiving the news of the death of all his children and the loss of all his possessions, Job falls to his knees saying:
Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked shall return thither: the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
Three weeks after Norman's death, his brother William James McPhee was killed, the same day that another brother was wounded, the 19 July 1916. A fourth of the McPhee brothers was wounded on 7 June 1917.

A MOTHER'S HEART IS BURIED
WITH HER DEAR SOLDIER SON

PRIVATE THOMAS JOSEPH DAWES

Thomas Dawes mother both chose his inscription and filled in the circular for the Roll of Honour of Australia. On the latter, in the section which asks whether there's any other biographical information likely to be of interest to historians of the AIF, Mrs Dawes tells how her son was very ill on the journey out from Australia and, believing himself to be dying, wrote a letter to his mother, put it in a bottle and threw it overboard. Four months later the bottle came ashore on the west coast of Australia and the letter was posted on to his mother in Victoria.
Eleven days after her son's death, Mrs Dawes inserted a death anouncement in her local paper, the Bendigo Advertiser; it concludes with a long memorial verse which reveals her pain.
When the flags are o'er the roadways
And the troops come marching home,
And the sweethearts lean to bless them
And the mothers to caress them.
O God, have pity for the waiting ones
Whose boys can never come.

O SACRED HEART OF JESUS
HAVE MERCY ON HIS SOUL
RIP

CORPORAL JAMES SADDINGTON MM

James Saddington was a Roman Catholic and it was his mother who chose a classic Roman Catholic text for his inscription. The manner of his death, killed in action, would have deprived him of the last rites so the text was therefore a plea to Jesus to secure his path through purgatory.

FOR EVER ENGLAND

CORPORAL JAMES ANTHONY LINCEY

James Lincey had been in Tasmania for three years when he returned to Europe as a soldier in 1916. Born in Menstone-in-Wharfdale, England, he emigrated with his parents in 1913. His father died two years later. His mother therefore chose his inscription, "For ever England". The quotation is taken from the third line of Rupert Brooke's famous poem, The Soldier:
If I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

DARLING JACK
HOW I MISS YOU
NOBODY KNOWS BUT ME
MOTHER

PRIVATE JOHN FAGAN

A deeply personal inscription from a mother whose son is buried 10,000 miles away from his home in Geelong, Australia. She uses her son's headstone to send him a private message of grief and longing. 'Nobody knows but me Mother', even though the form confirming the inscription was signed by her husband, John's father.

OUR NOBLE HAROLD
DIED SAVING AN OFFICER
GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN

PRIVATE HAROLD EDWIN TREMBATH

"Killed Mont St Quentin, France whilst voluntarily carrying a wounded officer back to dressing station." This is what Private Trembath's father wrote in the the section 'Place where killed or wounded' on the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia. Further down the form he explains how, influenced by the Principal of Ballarat College, Major Garbutt, his son was very keen to get to the Front, writing in one of his last letters, "Father, I intend to Play the Game". From the form it's difficult to tell whether Mr Trembath blames Major Garbutt for his son's military enthusiasm, but seeing how he describes his son in the inscription, "Our noble Harold", I feel father saw it that way too.

AN ONLY SON
KILLED IN ACTION
ON HIS WAY TO
LEAVE AND WEDDING

LANCE CORPORAL HAROLD GILKES

The Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau would make extensive enquiries when it needed to find out exactly what had happened to a casualty. Their records, now digitised, reveal that Private Gilkes "was about 19, fair, medium height, and fresh complexion. A fine little soldier. His name was Harry" (Lieutenant Hindmarsh). Information pieced together from other witnesses describe what happened: they were holding an advanced position and had been bothered by a sniper, at about mid-day Gilkes crawled out into the long grass to try and get him. When he didn't return his mates went out to look for him and found him shot through the head, "the bullet entered the top of his head, coming out at the back above his neck", "I helped carry him from the front line to the support line where they placed him on a stretcher", "he was working for leave to go to England to meet his father. He expected to get married".

"I MUST GO!
I AM ASHAMED TO BE SEEN
WITHOUT A SOLDIER'S UNIFORM"

PRIVATE ALFRED KINGSNORTH MALLYON

This is a difficult inscription. It was chosen by Private Mallyon's father and as the words are in quotation marks they presumably belong to Private Mallyon himself. I used to think that he must have been admitting to having been constrained by public opinion into enlisting. However, I now don't think this can be the case. If it was, why did his father say on the form for the Roll of Honour of Australia that his son had been deeply impressed by the tombs of "England's noble sons" in St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Alfred had gone on to tell his father that, when you remember what they stood for, coupled with the high traditions of our country "one needs no further inspiration to fight for them, and if need be lay down one's life for them". Maybe the two sentiments - headstone inscription and Roll of Honour quote - are not incompatible, but if so the former is easily misunderstood without the latter.

QUI ANTE DIEM PERIIT
SED MILES, SED PRO PATRIA

LIEUTENANT JOHN RIGGALL BLAIR

These are the last lines of Henry Newbolt's poem 'Clifton Chapel'. They are not quoted from an ancient Latin author, Newbolt wrote them himself. The words translate as, 'Who died before his time - but a soldier, but for his country.' In the poem, published in 1898, a new boy at his father's old school is shown, by his father, the school chapel and encouraged to embrace the Christian and chivalric codes that constitute the public school ethos. Pointing out a brass memorial plaque on the Chapel wall, the father implies that there can be no purer following in life than to be a soldier who is prepared to die for his country. The last verse reads:
God send you fortune: yet be sure,
Among the lights that gleam and pass,
You'll live to follow none more pure
Than that which glows on yonder brass.
'Qui procul hinc', the legend's writ, -
The frontier grave is far away -
'Qui ante diem periit:
Sed miles, sed pro patria.

HE FOUGHT AND DIED
FOR HIS WIFE AND LITTLE SON
AND TO SAVE HIS COUNTRY

PRIVATE GEORGE HENRY DUNSTAN

In civilian life George Dunstan was a Methodist Home Missionary. As such he was exempt from military service but, according to his family, he preferred to help his country. When he signed his Attestation Paper on 24 September 1916 he was unmarried, giving his parents as his next of kin. By the time of his death his wife was next of kin. Her name was Ivy Doris but I have been unable to find any information about his little son who by my calculations could only have been months old when his father was killed.

HIS BRAVE YOUNG LIFE HE GAVE
THAT BRITONS STILL
MIGHT LIVE

DRIVER ERIC ROBERT LANGE

Driver Lange was "dangerously wounded" on 8 June and died five days later "of gunshot wounds". Australian born, his mother, who chose the inscription, stated that he died that Britons still might live, a huge, all-embracing cause. At that date, the word Britons referred to the people of the British Empire. It was a slightly archaic word; the term 'the British' or even 'the English' being more usual. The word does however have echoes of 'Rule Britannia' with its proud refrain - "Britons never shall be slaves".

HE GAVE HIS LIFE
FOR FRANCE AND LIBERTY

DRIVER CARLYLE EUGENE BLACKBURNE

In his last letter home Carl Blackburne wrote, "I have been in some terrible stunts but I trust in God, lead a clean life, and do my duty." Backburne was a thirty-seven-year old forest worker from Maryborough, Victoria, who saw it as his duty to fight and die for France and Liberty.

HE DIED FOR AUSTRALIA

PRIVATE WILLIAM GAR

For Private Gar's parents the cause was unequivocal, their son died for Australia not God, King or Empire as many other Australians did. William Gar was a Filipino, born Guillemo Gah on Thursday Island, Queensland, Northern Territory, which allowed him to answer 'Yes' to the question 'Are you a natural born British subject' on his Attestation Paper. Gar was apparently one of only eight Filipinos from the Northern Territory to enlist. For some reason I find Carlos and Mary (Gah) Gar's overt loyalty to Australia both significant and rather moving.

DUTY NOBLY DONE

LANCE CORPORAL WALTER MAGARRY

Taken from King George V's message to the Expeditionary Force, 12 August 1914: Duty is your watchword, and I know your duty will be nobly done.