A Memorial Cross

Is it a bit morbid harping on about graves and war memorials? I hope not. The first World War I memorial in London and perhaps the country was unveiled today, 4th August, a hundred years ago. The date was significant in 1916 because it was exactly two years since the outbreak of war. The memorial is outside St Botolph without Bishopsgate in the City.

City churches do have cute names. My favourite is St Andrew by the Wardrobe, so called because Edward III kept his wardrobe nearby. St Botolph is “without Bishopsgate” because in the Middle Ages it stood outside the city walls near the Bishop’s Gate. Today it is firmly in the City on Bishopsgate not far from Liverpool Street station. It survived the Great Fire but was rebuilt anyway in 1725. The memorial takes the form of a cross mounted on an octagonal plinth. On four alternating sides of the plinth there are these inscriptions.

In memoriam, officers and men of the Honourable Artillery Company who died in the Great War.
August 4, 1916.

In memory of our brave dead of Bishopsgate, 1914 – 1916.

John Travers Cornwell VC of HMS Chester, the Battle of Jutland, June 1916, hero of 16 years.

Kitchener, June 5, 1916, Lest we forget.

The first two inscriptions are self-explanatory but you may not be familiar with John Cornwell who died of wounds sustained at Jutland. The citation for his Victoria Cross in the London Gazette reads as follows.

The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the grant of the Victoria Cross to Boy, First Class, John Travers Cornwell, O.N.J.42563 (died 2 June 1916), for the conspicuous act of bravery specified below. Mortally wounded early in the action, Boy, First Class, Jack Travers Cornwell remained standing alone at a most exposed post, quietly awaiting orders, until the end of the action, with the gun’s crew dead and wounded all round him. His age was under sixteen and a half years.

This sad story reminds me of a similar incident at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. The French vessel Orient was hit and the magazine exploded. The commander’s young son remained, like John, at his post inspiring a poem; one my grandfather was fond of reciting although it is out of fashion these days. Here is how it starts.

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck
Shone round him o’er the dead.

Lord Kitchener was on HMS Hampshire going from Scapa Flow to the Russian port of Archangel on a diplomatic mission to keep Russia in the war. The cruiser hit a German mine and sank west of the Orkney Islands. His body was never recovered.

At lunchtime today I will be wearing an HAC tie at a Service at St Botolph’s followed by a re-dedication of the cross. Part of the Service will be taken by the Bishop of Stepney one of whose predecessors took the same role a hundred years ago. While the HAC plays an operational role in the Territorial Army today, the HAC Pikemen and Musketeers are purely ceremonial. Here they are being inspected by HM the Queen.