LIEUTENANT COLONEL JOHN WILLOUGHBY SCOTT DSO
23RD APRIL 1917 AGE 38
BURIED: CABARET-ROUGE BRITISH CEMETERY, SOUCHEZ, FRANCE
In 1914, John Scott was a barrister at the Inner Temple who had served as a regular officer with the Royal Artillery in the South African War. He retired in 1908. but joined the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars with the rank of Captain. When the war broke out he went to France with the regiment in September 1914. In January 1916 he was gazetted Lieutenant-Colonel in the Somerset Light Infantry and was killed leading them in an attack during the Battle of the Scarp on 23 April 1917.
His adjutant, who was wounded beside him, later wrote to Scott's wife to tell her what had happened.
"We took part in a big attack last Monday, the 23rd; we started at 4.45 am, and our Battalion was in support of the 4th Middlesex. At the start the attack went off fairly well, although the Germans had quite a lot of artillery opposite us, and the barrage was accurate. We were held up by machine-guns before reaching the road running between Roeux and Gavrelle, and we were in shell holes all the morning till about 1 pm, by which time the strong point which had held us up was cleared of all the Germans in it. We then advanced about 300 yards and were preparing to push on to what is called Greenland Hill. We then used our glasses standing up in a shell hole, and the Colonel was killed instantaneously by a sniper."
Memorials of Rugbeians Who Fell in the Great War
Volume IV
John Scott's inscription was chosen by his wife. 'Love is sacrifice'. John Scott sacrificed his life for the love of his country. Madeline Scott may have felt that she had sacrificed her husband. It's certainly what many next-of-kin felt, as Harry Lauder wrote after visiting his son's grave.
" And my own grief was altered by the vision of the grief that had come to so many others. Those crosses, stretching away as far as my eye could reach, attested to the fact that it was not I alone who had suffered and lost and laid a sacrifice upon the altar of my country."
A Minstrel in France
Harry Lauder 1918