WE ALWAYS THINK
OF YOU DEAR SAM
AND SHALL UNTIL WE DIE

SERGEANT SAMUEL GEORGE JUBILEE BEAUCHAMP

AUSTRALIAN MACHINE GUN CORPS

15TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 29

BURIED: NINE ELMS BRITISH CEMETERY, WEST FLANDERS, BELGIUM


Sam Beauchamp died of gas poisoning in a Casualty Clearing Station near Poperinge on 15 October 1917. Whilst there is no specific information about when exactly he was gassed, the Germans had launched a mustard gas attack on the British trenches in the region on the night of 11/12 October 1917 so it could have been then.
I like this inscription. So many families used deeply conventional, poetic phraseology when they picked an inscription that this is refreshingly simple.
Beauchamp's father chose it, his mother having died in 1912. So who were the "we" who would always think of him? The answer is Amelia, Frederick, George, Victor, Gladys, Eric, Florence, John and Sydney, his nine brothers and sisters, the last of whom died in the 1980s.