LIEUTENANT GUY JOHN HAMILTON ASHWIN
DURHAM LIGHT INFANTRY
7TH NOVEMBER 1916 AGE 22
BURIED: WARLENCOURT BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
Lieutenant Ashwin was killed in the Durham Light Infantry's attempt to capture the Butte de Warlencourt, which they succeeded temporarily in doing only to be driven off again with huge casualties. The Butte is thought to have been a prehistoric burial mound, several hundred feet high, which gave the possessors a strategic advantage over the flat land around. It was not captured until February 1917.
Guy Ashwin's inscription is a line from a prayer written by William Penn (1644-1718), the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. The prayer was later modified by an American writer, Rossiter W Raymond (1840-1918), and it is to him that the Internet usually attributes the authorship.
We seem to give them back to Thee, O God, who gavest them to us. Yet, as thou didst not lose them in giving, so do we not lose them by their return. Not as the world giveth, givest Thou, O Lover of Souls. What Thou givest, Thou takest not away. For what is Thine is ours also if we are Thine. And life is eternal and love is immortal, and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. Lift us up, strong Son of God, that we may see further; cleanse our eyes that we may know ourselves to be nearer to our loved ones who art with Thee. And while Thou dost prepare a place for us, prepare us also for that happy place, that where Thou art we may be also for evermore.