LOVED AND LOST AWHILE

LIEUTENANT MONTAGUE DOUGLAS SPANKIE

14TH KING GEORGE'S OWN FEROZEPORE SIKHS

14TH MAY 1915 AGE 24

BURIED: PINK FARM CEMETERY, GALLIPOLI, TURKEY


Lieutenant Spankie's mother has adapted a line from Cardinal Henry Newman's extremely popular hymn 'Lead Kindly Light' for her son's headstone inscription. The hymn is not an unusual source for inscriptions but it's usually the first line of the first verse that's chosen:

Lead, kindly light, amidst th'encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

Mrs Spankie, a widow whose husband, Montague's father, had been an officer in the Indian army, has adapted a line from verse 3:

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone.
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!

It is not clear how Lieutenant Spankie died but the previous two days, 12th and 13th May, the 29th Indian Brigade, which had only arrived in Gallipoli on 1 May, had taken part in an action that became known as Gurkha Bluff. Did Lieutenant Spankie die from injuries sustained in that action or was he killed by a sniper as the Brigade withdrew the next day?