GEORGE BERNARD STRATTON
11TH AUGUST 1917 AGE 40
BURIED: ,
What's a punkah and what did Major Stratton's widow see in these words to think they made a suitable inscription? A punkah is large piece of cloth, like a short curtain, suspended from the ceiling on a frame and moved forwards and backwards across the ceiling by a cord to cool the air (a punkah wallah was the man who pulled the cord). The words come from Kipling's poem The Last Department; however well you've done in the world, to whichever department you've been promoted, the last department is always death and you can be 'promoted' there on a whim without any warning:
"A breath of wind, a Border bullet's flight,
A draught of water, or a horse's fright - "
In India, any of these could be the cause of sudden death, at which point, "ceases, the punkah stops, and falls the night for you or me".
Why did Mrs Stratton think this was a suitable inscription? Major Stratton served with the 10th Battalion Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, a pioneer battalion. On the night of the 10/11 August 1917 he was asleep in the battalion headquarters near Dunkirk, some considerable distance behind the front line, when it was hit by two shells and he, the colonel and the adjutant were all killed. Not exactly 'a Border bullet's flight' but certainly unexpected.