CAPTAIN THE HON. JULIAN HENRY GRENFELL DSO
1ST ROYAL DRAGOONS
26TH MAY 1915 AGE 27
BURIED: BOULOGNE EASTERN CEMETERY, FRANCE
Julian Grenfell, author of the poem 'Into Battle', was the eldest son of Lord and Lady Desborough of Taplow Court in Buckinghamshire. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, he joined the army in 1910. On 13 May 1915, he was hit in the head by a shrapnel fragment and died in hospital in Boulogne thirteen days later.
His inscription is part of a longer Latin quotation the origins of which I have been unable to discover: Hieme et aestate, et prope et procul, usque dum vivam et ultra - In winter and summer, near and far, during life and beyond. Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff recorded the inscription in the notes to his diary (1896-1901), saying that it was said to have been found in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Berchtold Brecht quotes it in his play 'Life of Galileo' written in 1948. The words imply constancy, unchangeableness, - usque dum vivam et ultra.