SECOND LIEUTENANT PATRICK ARTHUR DUDLEY JACKSON
ROYAL IRISH RIFLES
4TH JANUARY 1917 AGE 19
BURIED: HYDE PARK CORNER (ROYAL BERKS) CEMETERY, HAINAUT, BELGIUM
Patrick Jackson, "Sonny", was the only son of Lt Colonel and Mrs Cecil Jackson. According to the brass plaque fixed to his original wooden grave marker, which hangs in St Michael's Church, Thornton, Buckinghamshire, Jackson was commissioned into the army straight from school in 1914, and first went to the Western Front in 1915. School was Eton, as the final line of his inscription makes clear: Floreat Etona, may Eton flourish. This was a familiar greeting or valediction among Etonians as the obituary of another Etonian, John Byron Noel, makes clear: "'Floreat Etona' were the last words he wrote to one of his greatest friends the day he started for France."