CAPTAIN EDWARD HENRY COURTENAY THORP
DEVONSHIRE REGIMENT
21ST AUGUST 1918 AGE 20
BURIED: GOMMECOURT BRITISH CEMETERY NO. 2, HEBUTERNE, FRANCE
Edward Thorp was born in Bengal, India and educated at Clifton College, Bristol. He was gazetted into the Devonshire Regiment in April 1916 and from September 1916 served in France, Belgium and Italy before being killed in action in the capture of Bucquoy on 21 August 1918.
His inscription comes from the last verse of Robert Louis Stevenson's poem 'In Memoriam F.A.S.' written to commemorate an eighteen-year-old boy, Francis Albert Sitwell, who died of consumption in Davos in 1881. The words apply just as appropriately to a twenty-year-old soldier killed in action in France in 1918.
YET, O stricken heart, remember, O remember
How of human days he lived the better part.
April came to bloom and never dim December
Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart.
Doomed to know not Winter, only Spring, a being
Trod the flowery April blithely for awhile,
Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing,
Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile.
Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished,
You alone have crossed the melancholy stream,
Yours the pang, but his, O his, the undiminished
Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream.
All that life contains of torture, toil, and treason,
Shame, dishonour, death, to him were but a name.
Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season
And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came.