PRIVATE FRANK TURNER
LOYAL NORTH LANCASHIRE REGIMENT
24TH NOVEMBER 1917 AGE 27
BURIED: ETAPLES MILITARY CEMETERY, FRANCE
Private Frank Turner's inscription was chosen by his widowed mother, Fanny Turner. She kept the Tim Bobbin Hotel on Padiham Road, Burnley, where Frank was working as a waiter according to the 1911 census.
After the war, the hotel dedicated its own Roll of Honour to the 100 men associated with the house who had served in the war, with a framed photograph of the five who died. Frank Turner was wounded at Passchendaele Ridge and died in a Base Hospital at Etaples on 24 November 1917.
Frank Turner's inscription comes from Tennyson's Break, Break, Break, which was often quoted in memorial inscriptions both military and civilian for its perfect evocation of longing for a time and a person that can never return
Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue would utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill:
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.