"A GRIM GRAY TRIBUTE
OF MEMORY
IS ALL WE HAVE LEFT TO GIVE" CMH

CAPTAIN CYRIL MORTON HORNE

KING'S OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS

27TH JANUARY 1916 AGE 29

BURIED: MARZINGARBE COMMUNAL CEMETERY, FRANCE


Cyril Morton Horne was an Irish writer and music hall performer. His inscription is a quotation from one of his own poems, Aftermath, taken from his book, Songs of the Shrapnel Shell:

A grim, gray tribute of memory
Is all we have left to give
To those who have fought and fallen
From those who sorrow and live.
Memory lives and we wonder
If the law of the gods was kind,
For the hardest battle was fought by
The somebody-left-behind.

Cyril Horne made his debut on the London stage in 1910 and then later that year he went to Broadway where he spent three years. He was killed trying to rescue a soldier lying out in the front of the trenches. He was close to succeeding when a shrapnel shell exploded overhead and killed them both.