Epitaphs of the Great War: Passchendaele

Sarah Wearne

• Publisher: Uniform
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781910500651
• eBook ISBN:
  9781911604693
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Primera Guerra Mundial

Epitaphs of the Great War Passchendaele is an edited collection of headstone inscriptions from the graves of those killed during the Third Battle of Ypres – Passchendaele. Limited by the Imperial War Graves Commission to sixty-six characters – far more restrictive than Twitter's 140-character rule – these inscriptions are masterpieces of compact emotion. But, as Sarah Wearne says, their enforced brevity means that many inscriptions rely on the reader being able to pick up on the references and allusions, or recognise the quotations – and many twenty-first-century readers don't. Consequently she has selected one hundred inscriptions from the battlefield cemeteries and by expanding the context – religious, literary or personal – she has been able to give full voice to the bereaved. This collection, the second in a short series, will be published to coincide with the centenary of the opening of the Passchendaele offensive on 31 July 1917. Together with Epitaphs of the Great War The Somme, published on 1 July 2016, these books cover the epitaphs of the ordinary and the famous, the privileged and the poor, the generals and the privates and, after a hundred years, give us an insight into what contemporaries believed they had been fighting for and how they viewed the loss of the men they had loved.

AGE 17 YRS. 1 MON. 10 DYS
IN THY KEEPING
OUR FATHER

GUNNER MAITLAND HAROLD GORING

CANADIAN FIELD ARTILLERY

DIED 19 OCTOBER 1917 AGED 17

BURIED BRANDHOEK NEW MILITARY CEMETERY NO. 3

I, Maitland Harold Goring, do solemnly swear that the above are answers made by me to the above questions and that they are true …

 

Attestation Paper Canadian Over-seas Expeditionary Force

Maitland Harold Goring signed this form on 17 January 1917. One of the ‘above’ answers was to the question: what is your date of birth? To which young Maitland Goring had written, 9 September 1898. But this was a lie; Goring’s date of birth was 9 September 1900. This explains why his mother was so specific about her son’s age on his headstone. On the day he died, Goring was 17 years, one month and 10 days old. Soldiers were meant to be 18 before they could enlist and 19 before they went overseas. Did the fact that Goring named his grandmother as his next-of-kin have anything to do with this deception, the one his mother was determined to correct?

The Canadian Expeditionary Force burial register for Brandhoek Military Cemetery No. 3 recorded the circumstances of his death:

‘Killed in action’
He had just been dismissed from Parade, and was making for bivouac in Ypres area, when he was killed outright by a splinter from a bomb dropped from an enemy aeroplane.

READER PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD

SAPPER ARTHUR OLIVER ELLIS

AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERS

DIED 21 OCTOBER 1917 AGED 32

BURIED TYNE COT CEMETERY

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.

Sapper Ellis’s inscription, chosen by his stepmother, comes from the writings of the Methodist biblical scholar and theologian Adam Clarke (c1760-1832). It was not unusual to find the phrase on nineteenth-century gravestones. Since we know neither the day nor the hour when death will take us, we must live our lives in readiness; once we are dead it will be too late to change our ways and win our place in ‘the eternal world’.

Sapper Ellis was a eucalyptus distiller from Macedon, Victoria, who enlisted in January 1916. Witnesses saw him killed on 21 October 1917, and some had identified his body, but after that the body was lost and not located until October 1920.

I was told that a chap named Ellis was lying on the roadside killed. As I had a friend named Arthur Ellis I went up and found it was not my friend, but A.O.Ellis 7555. I saw his body, he had been killed by a shell up towards Westhoek Ridge, not far from Duckboard Walk. He had his disc on and I remember no. and initials.

 

H.L.Harbison 7652 18 March 1918
Witness to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau

A SOLDIER’S SON
GAVE HIS LIFE
FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR
REST IN PEACE

LANCE CORPORAL ARCHIBALD NICHOLSON COE

SOUTH AFRICAN INFANTRY

DIED 21 OCTOBER 1917 AGED 24

BURIED CEMENT HOUSE CEMETERY

‘He died for freedom and honour’, these are the words on the bronze plaque distributed to the next-of-kin of everyone who died of whatever cause (except execution) whilst in the service of the Crown either at home or abroad between 4 August 1914 and 30 April 1919. The circular plaque, designed by Edward Carter Preston (1894-1965), features the figure of Britannia holding a laurel wreath over the casualty’s name. Beside her is a lion, representing the British Empire and at the base of the plaque a much smaller lion savaging the Imperial German eagle. Manufacture began in December 1918 and eventually more than 1,000,000 were distributed, 600 of them to the next of kin of the women who died.

Many next-of-kin chose the exact words on the plaque for an inscription; Captain Richard James Coe modified them. His son ‘gave his life for freedom and honour’, thus emphasising that he had been a volunteer not a conscript – not that there was any conscription in South Africa.

Lance Corporal Coe served with the 4th Regiment South African Infantry, known as the South African Scottish, which was part of the South African Brigade. The brigade arrived in Britain in November 1915, and in France in April 1916 where its legendary defence of Delville Wood in July 1916 resulted in huge casualties. 1917 saw the brigade take part in the battles of Arras and Third Ypres. On 13 October 1917 it moved into the front line trenches near Ypres. Although not involved in any action the four South African regiments were subject to heavy and continuous enemy shelling and aerial bombardment so that by the time they were relieved on 23 October the brigade had suffered 261 casualties killed and wounded. Coe was among the dead.

DEATH OPENS UNKNOWN DOORS
IT IS MOST GRAND TO DIE

LIEUTENANT DEREK EDWARD LEWIS VENN BAUMER

ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY

DIED 21 OCTOBER 1917 AGED 20

BURIED SOLFERINO FARM CEMETERY

Baumer’s inscription comes from John Masefield’s play, The Tragedy of Pompey the Great (1910). The lines form part of a brief meditation on death over the body of Pompey’s youthful commander, Valerius Flaccus. The 1st Centurion, looking at the body, remarks: ‘Man is a sacred city, built of marvellous earth’, to which the 2nd replies, ‘Life was lived nobly here to give this body birth’. The 4th Centurian brings the conversation to the end a few lines later with the comment: ‘Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die’. Impressed by the conversation, Ivor Gurney set it to music in a six-line song called By a Bierside. Gurney was serving in the front line at the time and wrote to tell a friend that, ‘events yesterday gave one full opportunity to reflect on one’s chances of doing that grand thing’. Baumer was the son of the Punch cartoonist and book illustrator, Lewis Baumer. Educated at Winchester College, he won a Classical Scholarship to New College, Oxford but on leaving school in 1914 instead of going up he joined up. He was still only 17 so it was January 1916, just after his nineteenth birthday, before he was sent to France. He served with the 86th Battery Royal Field Artillery and w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• TITLE PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• THE BATTLE OF PASSCHENDAELE (THIRD YPRES)
• PREFACE
• THE ODDS AND ENDS HE LOVED SO WELL ALL LEFT BEHIND
• AND HOW CAN MAN DIE BETTER THAN FACING FEARFUL ODDS
• Y PRIFARDD HEDD WYNN
• 4TH SON OF EARL OF ALBEMARLE KILLED IN ACTION WESTHOEK MENTIONED IN DESPATCHES RESURGAM
• “MY SON, MY SON” “NO REWARD CAN BE TOO GREAT”
• PASS FRIEND – ALL’S WELL!
• HE GAVE UP ALL EVEN LIFE ITSELF FOR THE IDEALS OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE
• BUT THE THOUSANDTH MAN WILL STAND YOUR FRIEND WITH THE WHOLE ROUND WORLD AGIN YOU
• OF BRYNGWENALLT DOLGELLY , N. WALES “A DDUG ANGAU NI DDWG ANGOF”
• HIS COUNTRY CALLED HE ANSWERED
• COULD I BUT KNEEL BESIDE THE GRAVE OF HIM WE LOVED SO DEAR HIS MOTHER
• “THE ELEMENTS BE KIND TO THEE AND MAKE THY SPIRITS ALL OF COMFORT” S
• OMNIA VINCIT AMOR
• “SERVANT OF GOD, MAN’S FRIEND”
• ALL THAT HE HAS LEFT IS BRUISED AND IRREMEDIABLY BEREFT
• THE PATH OF DUTY WAS THE WAY TO GLORY
• HEAVEN IS FULL OF GAY AND CARELESS FACES NEW-WAKED FROM DREAMS OF DREADFUL THINGS
• A SON OF ULSTER WHO DID HIS DUTY
• WHILE THE LIGHT LASTS I SHALL REMEMBER GEORGINA
• “OUR NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN CAPTAIN AND LEADER” COMPANY MESSAGE
• BORN AT KOBE, JAPAN 9TH OCTOBER 1890 SACRIFICED TO THE FALLACY THAT WAR CAN END WAR
• TENDER BUT FEARLESS GENEROUS AND CHIVALROUS
• A GOOD SON A GOOD SOLDIER A GOOD SPORTSMAN UNSELFISH TO THE END
• UNITED WITH HIS FATHER & FALLEN BROTHER BERT MY ALL GONE
• THANK GOD: WE KNOW THAT HE “BATTED WELL” IN THE LAST GREAT GAME OF ALL
• I HAVE FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT I HAVE FINISHED MY COURSE I HAVE KEPT THE FAITH
• A NOBLE TYPE OF GOOD HEROIC WOMANHOOD
• THEIR BODIES ARE BURIED IN PEACE BUT THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE
• WHO DIES IF ENGLAND LIVES WHO LIVES IF ENGLAND DIES
• DIED AT THE GUNS HEARTENING HIS MEN AT ZILLEBEKE LAKE
• TRANQUIL YOU LIE … YOUR MEMORY HALLOWED IN THE LAND YOU LOVED
• IN LOVING MEMORY OF JIM & HIS FOUR BROTHERS KILLED IN ACTION UNITED IN DEATH
• AFTER ONE CROWDED HOUR OF GLORIOUS LIFE HE SLEEPS WELL
• ON HONOUR’S SCROLL HIS NAME SHALL BE THOUGH ALL UNKNOWN TO HISTORY
• THAT FROM THIS GREAT BIG WORLD YOU’VE CHOSEN ME
• HE DID HIS BIT
• CHA TILL GU BRATH GU LA NA CRUINNE
• MY FIRST PRIDE MY FIRST JOY MY BRAVE SOLDIER BOY
• “I LEAVE MYSELF IN GOD’S HANDS” EXTRACT FROM HIS DIARY WRITTEN 19.9.17
• FORGET ME NOT DEAR LAND FOR WHICH I FELL
• I AM HERE AS THE RESULT OF UNCIVILISED NATIONS
• JUST FOR A SCRAP OF PAPER
• LEAVING A WIDOW AND THREE CHILDREN HIS DUTY DONE
• A BRAVE BRIGHT SPIRIT HIS LAST WORDS WERE “CARRY ON”
• MAN AM I GROWN A MAN’S WORK MUST I DO ELSE WHEREFORE BORN
• A WILLING SACRIFICE FOR THE WORLD’S PEACE
• AN IDEAL SOLDIER AND VERY PERFECT GENTLEMAN BELOVED BY ALL HIS MEN
• WHEN THE FIELDS ARE WHITE WITH DAISIES I’LL RETURN IN LOVING MEMORY
• IN MEMORY OF THE DEARLY LOVED SON OF J.H. PHILLIPS OF BRISBANE
• KILLED IN ACTION JESU MERCY
• BY THE PATH OF DUTY R.I.P.
• THE LOVE THAT LINGERS O’ER HIS NAME IS MORE THAN FAME
• STRAIGHT OF LIMB TRUE OF EYE STEADY AND AGLOW
• HE GAVE HIS LIFE FOR ANOTHER
• “THE WORLD SHALL END WHEN I FORGET” SWINBURNE
• GIVEN BY A LOVING FATHER AND MOTHER WITH PROUD BUT ACHING HEARTS
• IT IS MEN OF MY AGE AND SINGLE WHO ARE EXPECTED TO DO THEIR DUTY
• WHEN ALIVE THEY WOULD NOT TAKE YOUR PLACE THEY CANNOT HAVE IT NOW MY SON
• ONE OF GOD’S GOOD MEN
• “I’M ALL RIGHT MOTHER CHEERIO”
• TO THEM THAT SAVED OUR HERITAGE AND CAST THEIR OWN AWAY
• ROCK OF AGES CLEFT FOR ME
• “TIS SWEET TO DIE FOR ONE’S COUNTRY”
• ONE WHO LOVED HIS FELLOW MEN
• THE LORD WATCH BETWEEN ME AND THEE WHEN WE ARE ABSENT ONE FROM ANOTHER
• HE LOVED HONOUR MORE THAN HE FEARED DEATH
• A HAPPY WARRIOR
• I COULD NOT LOVE YOU DEAR SO WELL LOVED I NOT HONOR MORE
• A SOLDIER AND A MAN
• HE GAVE HIS LIFE FOR HIS COMRADES
• IN THE WORDS OF HIS COLONEL HE WAS AN EXAMPLE TO ALL
• HE LEFT HIS HOME TO GIVE HIS ALL FOR THE SAKE OF CIVILIZATION
• AGE 17 YRS. 1 MON. 10 DYS IN THY KEEPING OUR FATHER
• READER PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD
• A SOLDIER’S SON GAVE HIS LIFE FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR REST IN PEACE
• DEATH OPENS UNKNOWN DOORS IT IS MOST GRAND TO DIE
• O THAT WE COULD HAVE CLASPED HIS HAND & SOOTHED HIS PARTING HOURS
• HE SET US ALWAYS AN EXAMPLE OF CHEERFULNESS AND COURAGE
• IN THE MORN THOSE ANGEL FACES SMILE LONG LOVED BUT ONLY LOST AWHILE
• AND O’ WE GRUDGED HIM SAIR TO THE LAND O’ THE LEAL
• A JEW WHO GAVE HIS LIFE FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD
• WOULD SOME THOUGHTFUL HAND IN THIS DISTANT LAND PLEASE SCATTER SOME FLOWERS FOR ME
• “AND SOME WE LOVED –” OMAR
• FOR GOD, KING AND COUNTRY
• HIS BROTHER’S KEEPER
• CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL
• A PRAISE FOR THOSE WHO FOUGHT AND FELL TO SAVE THE EMPIRE’S NAME
• BEHOLD HOW GOOD AND HOW PLEASANT IT IS FOR BRETHREN TO DWELL TOGETHER IN UNITY (MOTHER)
• I HAVE GIVEN MY LIFE TO PROMOTE PEACE BETWEEN ALL NATIONS
• RANGATIRA PAKU
• SA MORT A LAISSE DANS NOS COEURS UNE PLAIE PROFONDE
• IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY DEAR HUSBAND THE KENT AND ENGLAND CRICKETER
• UNITED WITH HIS BELOVED BROTHERS OSBORNE & FRED WHO FELL IN 1915
• SON OF MALCOLM & MARION GIFFORD OF HUDSON, NEW YORK, USA
• HE WORE THE WHITE FLOWER OF A BLAMELESS YOUTH
• VIEGLAS SMILTIS SVESUMA DUSSI SALDI
• THEN THOUGHT I TO UNDERSTAND THIS BUT IT WAS TOO HARD FOR ME
• OUR BOY DUTY NOBLY DONE
• THROUGH HIS DEATH MANY HAVE LOST MUCH
• EPITAPHS FEATURED IN THIS BOOK BY CWGC CEMETERY
• COPYRIGHT