We will remember them

Picture: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Citadel New Military Cemetery near Fricourt, Somme, France.  This is the resting place of, among others, Drummer Ernest Arthur Patterson of 8th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, who was killed in action on 31st August 1915, aged 19.  The son of George and Emma Eliza Patterson, of Edith Cottage, Commodore Rd, Oulton Broad, Suffolk, he was also a cousin of mine.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever 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.

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.
Rupert Brooke