SERGEANT THOMAS J. PATTEN DCM
PRINCESS PATRICIA'S CANADIAN LIGHT INFANTRY
8TH MAY 1915 AGE 39
BURIED: TYNE COT CEMETERY, BELGIUM
Thomas J Patten was born in England, served with a Canadian Regiment, Princess Patricia's Light Infantry, and the Mr BM Patten who chose his inscription lived in Albany, New York. Thomas Patten, a veteran of the South African War, enlisted in Ottawa on 24 August 1914. He was killed at Bellewaerde Ridge during the battle of Frezenberg when the regiment suffered huge losses, NCOs stepping up to fill the places of dead officers in seeming rapid succession. Patten's body was exhumed from the battlefield in 1920 and identified by a torch he had been carrying.
His inscription comes from the American William Cullen Bryant's 1871 translation of The Iliad. The lines follow the death of the young Trojan Iphidamus:
Unhappy youth! he slept an iron sleep, -
Slain fighting for his country far away
From the young virgin bride yet scarcely his.
In America these words have resonated down the years, even being used to commemorate US soldiers killed in Vietnam. But other translations don't have such a noble ring:
He fell and slept an iron sleep; wretched young man, he died,
Far from his newly-married wife, in aid of foreign pride
George Chapman 1616
Stretched in the dust the unhappy warrior lies.
And sleep eternal seals his eyes.
Alexander Pope 1720
So there the poor fellow lay, sleeping a sleep as it were of bronze, killed in defence of his fellow citizens.
Samuel Butler 1898