LOST TOO SOON
LOVED SO WELL
TOO DEAR FOR DEATH
MY SON FAREWELL

PRIVATE JAMES DAVIDSON

LONDON REGIMENT ROYAL FUSILIERS

2ND JUNE 1918 AGE 19

BURIED: DAINVILLE BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE


This is a peculiarly powerful inscription for all that the language is simple and the sentiments conventional. Private James Davidson's mother, Bridget, adapted it from something she may have seen written on other headstones or read in religious tracts. No author is ever mentioned but the whole verse reads:

O lost too soon - O loved too well!
Too dear for death - farewell! farewell!
One soothing solace yet is given,
Thou 'rt lost to earth, to live in heaven!
Fond faith forbids us to deplore,
For thou 'rt not dead, but gone before.

Davidson came from Sunderland. In 1911 his father worked in the coal mines as a shifter, someone who repaired the horse routes - rolley-ways - and other passages in the mines, keeping them free from obstruction. His sixteen-year-old brother was a 'driver', someone who led the horses pulling the coal trucks along the rolley-ways. James, aged 12, was still at school. No doubt a career in the mines lay before him.
Davidson may however have moved away. He served originally with the 29th Battalion London Regiment Royal Fusiliers but was posted to the 1st/4th. He died on 2 June 1918. There is no individual information about his death but the brigade diary reports heavy enemy bombardment of the Fusiliers' line that day.