LANCE CORPORAL PETER CAMPBELL
CAMERON HIGHLANDERS
30TH SEPTEMBER 1915 AGE 25
BURIED: LAPUGNOY MILITARY CEMETERY, BETHUNE, FRANCE
This lovely inscription comes from Robert Louis Stevenson's (1850-1894) poem 'Requiem', which was engraved on his own gravestone on Mount Vaea on the island of Samoa.
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Peter Campbell, a graduate of the University of Glasgow, came from Helensburgh on the West Coast of Scotland. His father had been a postman and he became a primary school teacher. Campbell volunteered on the outbreak of war and served with A Company the 6th Battalion Cameron Highlanders. Something of their training and of their involvement in the Battle of Loos can be read here.
Campbell was wounded during the battle on 26 September at Hill 70. He died of his wounds four days later.