LIEUTENANT W.H. WILLIAMS
ROYAL GARRISON ARTILLERY
9TH NOVEMBER 1918 AGE
BURIED: JEMAPPES COMMUNAL CEMETERY, BELGIUM
There are nine British soldiers buried in Jemappes Communal Cemetery, two from the first two months of the war and seven from the last two days. Jemappes is a few miles west of Mons - the war had come full circle.
Unfortunately I can tell you nothing about Lieutenant Williams - not his Christian names, nor his age, nor even the name of his next-of-kin; the War Graves Commission does not have a record of them. There is just the name and address, Mrs Williams, 8 Repton Avenue, Gidea Park, Romford, Kent under the form recording his inscription - his wife or his mother?
Williams' inscription is a direct translation of a lyric fragment by Simonides honouring the Greeks who died at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC:
"Of those who died at Thermopylae their fortune is glorious, and their fate lovely; their tomb is an altar, in place of lamentation there is remembrance, and pity becomes praise."
This Simonides' fragment is better known in the translation by Arthur Burrell, which was published in 'At the Front: A Pocket Book of Verse' (1915). The last three lines are more usually used as a dedication on a war memorial than as a headstone inscription:
Of them that died at Thermopylae
Glorious was the fortune: fair is the fate.
For a tomb they have an altar,
For lamentation, memory,
And for pity, praise.