PRIVATE MOSTYN SCOTT SANDS
CANADIAN INFANTRY
8TH MAY 1917 AGE 21
BURIED: LA TARGETTE BRITISH CEMETERY, NEUVILLE-ST VAAST, FRANCE
I am grateful to Eric McGeer for drawing my attention to this inscription and its meaning in his article Approaches to Canadian Epitaphs of the Great War. It sounds like a simple statement of fact - I raised my boy to be a soldier - but actually it's a proud reposte to a popular American anti-war song I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier. I shall quote the whole song here because, published early in 1915, it became a significant factor in keeping America out of the war for so long.
Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,
Who may never return again.
Ten million mother's hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Heads bowed in sorrow
In her lonely years,
I heard a mother murmur thru' her tears:
Chorus
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It's time to lay the sword and gun away.
There's be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."
What victory can cheer a mother's heart,
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All he cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
Remember that my boy belongs to me!
Chorus
In the light of this song it's significant that Mrs Sands signs the epitaph, 'Mother'.
Private Sands was killed in a German night attack on the Canadian trenches. The 28th Battalion Canadian Infantry War Diary records that as the 19th Battalion began to relieve them on the night of the 7th/8th May the Germans attacked and penetrated their lines. They were driven back by those of the 28th who hadn't yet left the trenches, together with the newly arrived 19th. Sands must have been among the soldiers of the 28th who hadn't yet left.