WAITING

PRIVATE CLARENCE GEORGE TOPPER

LONDON REGIMENT ROYAL FUSILIERS

9TH DECEMBER 1915 AGE 17

BURIED: PORTIANOS MILITARY CEMETERY, LEMNOS, GREECE


When I first read this inscription I assumed it was a bereaved wife assuring her husband that she would always be waiting for him and their reunion. But it isn't, it's from a bereaved mother and father for their only child.
Clarence George Topper was 17 when he died of tetanus in hospital in Mudros Bay on the island of Lemnos. At 17 he was technically too young to be serving at the front and maybe he wasn't. When the Army realised you were underage, if they ever did, they either sent you home or used you behind the lines. Mudros Bay was a huge allied camp off the coast of Gallipoli and Topper could have been working there when a simple scratch gave him tetanus. He could equally as easily have been injured in the fighting on Gallipoli and got tetanus that way.