SAPPER GODFREY TORBET MACKAY
CANADIAN ENGINEERS
5TH FEBRUARY 1919 AGE 24
BURIED: ETAPLES MILITARY CEMETERY, FRANCE
Godfrey Mackay was born in Aberdeen in February 1894. He emigrated to Canada in September 1912 and when he enlisted in February 1915 he was working as a cook in Montreal, naming his mother, Mrs Isabella Ogilvie of 22 Anderson Street, Montreal as his next of kin.
His inscription quotes 'A Fragment', a poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835). Hemans was once a very popular poet but perhaps she became a victim of her popularity and is now best known for her most parodied line from the poem Casabianca, "the boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled". In 1916 Andrew Macphail included 'A Fragment' in his comprehensive collection of poems on death, 'The Book of Sorrow', which perhaps gave it renewed prominence.
Rest on your battle-fields, ye brave!
Let the pines murmur o'er your grave,
Your dirge be in the moaning wave -
We call you back no more!
Oh! there was mourning when you fell,
In your own vales a deep-toned knell,
An agony, a wild farewell; -
But that hath long been o'er.
Rest with your still solemn fame;
The hills keep record of your name,
And never can a touch of shame
Darken the buried brow.
But we on changeful days are cast,
When bright names from their place fall fast
And ye that with your glory passed,
We cannot mourn you now.
Godfrey Mackay died of pneumonia, in all probability a complication of influenza, on 5 February 1919. His mother chose his inscription and although I have no evidence for this, something makes me think that the hills she had in mind were back home in Scotland not Canada.