CORPORAL JAMES ROY TUFF
NEWFOUNDLAND REGIMENT
28TH APRIL 1917 AGE 22
BURIED: DUISANS BRITISH CEMETERY, ETRUN, FRANCE
The reference to 'dust' in Corporal Tuff's inscription is in all probability a reference to Rupert Brooke's poem 'The Soldier':
If I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware ...
With the obvious proviso that France is specifically mentioned instead of 'a foreign field' and the 'dust' belonged to Newfoundland not England.
James Roy Tuff was a plumber from St John's, Newfoundland who was one of the first 500 Newfoundlanders to enlist as shown by his service number - 23. He sailed with them for England on 4 October 1914. After a period of training in the UK, the regiment embarked for Gallipoli in August 1915 and served there until the evacuation. Transferred to France, Tuff appears not to have been with the regiment on 1 July 1916 when its attack on Beaumont Hamel resulted in huge casualties. However, he was with it when it attacked at Monchy-le-Preux on 14 April 1917 where he received gun shot wounds in his back and arm from which he died two weeks later.
James Roy Tuff's brother, Frank Paine Tuff, was killed in action on 12 October 1916. His body was never found. Their service records can be found online here: James Roy Tuff Frank Paine Tuff