CAPTAIN THOMAS LEWIS INGRAM
ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS
16TH SEPTEMBER 1916 AGE 41
BURIED: GUARDS' CEMETERY LESBOEUFS, FRANCE
This inscription is a combination of two biblical quotations, one from the Old Testament and one from the New. "One heart and one way" comes from the Old Testament, Jeremiah 33:39. God says that He will gather all His people together from where in his anger and fury He has scattered them:
And I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely:
And they shall be my people, and I will be their God
And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them:
Jeremiah 33:37-39
If I have read the passage as Mrs Lilian Ingram, Captain Ingram's wife, has read it, the idea is that once the war is over, God will give all nations "one heart and one way" for them to follow for ever. "All nations" mind you, friend and foe: British, French, Russian, German, Turkish, Austrian, Italian et al, "for the good of them, and of their children after them".
For thus saith the Lord; Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good things that I have promised them.
Jeremiah 33:42
Providing, presumably, they follow with one heart the one way God has given them.
The second quotation, "With Christ, which is far better", comes from Philippians 1:23.
For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not.
For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ: which is far better:
Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.
Philippians 1:21-24
It would have been much "more needful" for the men of his regiment, the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, if Dr Thomas Ingram had managed to "abide in the flesh" with them rather than to have been killed in action as he was - even if to be with Christ "is far better". Trained at the London Hospital, where the London Hospital Gazette has a full obituary, Ingram was a much decorated - DSO, MC and twice Mentioned in Despatches - and a much loved doctor. As one of the captains in the regiment wrote:
"If there was one, all of us who ever had the honour of knowing him would have given anything to see spared, it was our dear old doc."
But he wasn't spared. No one quite knows what happened but it was his colonel's opinion, based on a prisoner's evidence, that whilst he was looking for the wounded along the German wire he was taken prisoner, and when he tried to escape and he was shot.