RIFLEMAN ALAN COLVILLE HUDSON
LONDON REGIMENT (LONDON RIFLE BRIGADE)
16TH JUNE 1918 AGE 19
BURIED: DAINVILLE BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
Alan Colville Hudson was the son of an elementary school headmaster; a fact which must go some way to explaining his educated inscription. However, it wasn't his father who chose it since father, Robert Hudson, died in May 1913, rather it was his mother, Helen Constance Hudson. She has quoted Chaucer, using archaic spelling, if not the usual archaic spelling:
A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie.
Trouth and honour, fredom and curteisie
The knight is the most admired person on the pilgrimage to Canterbury, depicted as the perfect example of Christian manhood, "a verray, parfit gentil knyght". Hudson, a rifleman in the 1st/5th London Regiment, was killed in action at Dainville just west of Arras. There are no details about his death.