SECOND LIEUTENANT JOHN SCOTT BELL
ROYAL ENGINEERS
1ST AUGUST 1917 AGE 27
BURIED: HOOGE CRATER CEMETERY, BELGIUM
In Classical Greece the winners of athletic and poetry competitions were awarded a crown of laurel leaves. The Romans awarded them to those who won military victories. Laurel wreaths thus became a symbol of victory transmuting through the Christian era into a symbol of martial, sacrificial service.
This is how John Scott Bell won his laurels. A mechanical engineer who had studied engineering at Leeds University, he attested in May 1915 and originally joined the ranks. He was commissioned in 1917 and killed at Pilckem Ridge at the opening at the Third Battle of Ypres - Passchendaele.
John Scott Bell's eldest sister Catherine chose his inscription, his parents were both dead. For all the Classical association of laurel leaves, I can't help feeling that she might have been influenced by one of Sir Frank Dicksee's deeply romantic paintings, Victory, a Knight being Crowned with a Laurel Wreath, that and the fact that when the family were growing up they lived at 12 Laurel Terrace, Armley, Leeds.
