My Boy Jack
Located near Haisnes, between the towns of Lens and La Bassée in the French department of Pas-de-Calais, St. Mary's A.D.S. Cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission military cemetery containing over 1,800 burials from the First World War. Among those buried here is Lieutenant John 'Jack' Kipling, the only son of the acclaimed British author Rudyard Kipling, whose death during the Battle of Loos in September 1915 would lead to a decades-long search for his final resting place.
The area surrounding the cemetery was the scene of fierce fighting during the Battle of Loos (25th September - 13th October 1915). Afterwards, the front lines stabilised around this area for nearly three years, until the Allied advance to victory in August 1918. After the war, burial parties removed the remains of hundreds of soldiers from the battlefield, and these were concentrated at the site of the former St. Mary's Advanced Dressing Station, which had been established during the Battle of Loos.
Most of the men buried here fell in September and October 1915. Although most of the bodies were found in isolated graves or small burial plots on the battlefield, nine soldiers were relocated from Loos Communal Cemetery, where they had originally been buried in February 1916, after the cemetery was badly damaged by shellfire.
St. Mary's A.D.S. Cemetery now contains over 1,800 burials. Of these, over two-thirds are unidentified, but there are special memorials to 23 soldiers known or believed to be buried among them. There are also six other special memorials recording the names of casualties who were originally buried in Loos Communal Cemetery, but whose graves were later destroyed by shellfire.
At one time, a French military cemetery stood on the opposite side of the road, but the 800 graves it contained were relocated to the Notre Dame-de-Lorette French National Cemetery in 1922.
Lieutenant John Kipling
Among the many soldiers commemorated at St. Mary's A.D.S. Cemetery, perhaps the best known is Lieutenant John 'Jack' Kipling, whose death at the Battle of Loos and the subsequent search for his remains would become one of the most poignant stories of the First World War.
John Kipling was born in Rottingdean, Sussex, on 17th August 1897, the youngest of three children and only son of the acclaimed British author Rudyard Kipling and his American wife Caroline Starr Balestier Kipling.
John was educated at St. Aubyn's School, near the family home in Rottingdean, and later at Wellington College, Berkshire. He was sixteen when war broke out in August 1914. His father, a keen imperialist and patriot, was soon writing propaganda on behalf of the British government, and John, wanting to do his bit, immediately volunteered for the Armed Forces.
He was initially rejected by both the Royal Navy and the British Army due to poor eyesight. However, Rudyard was friends with Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, a former Commander-in-Chief of the British Army and Colonel of the Irish Guards, and he was able to secure his son a commission as a second lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards, on 15th August 1914, two days before John's seventeenth birthday.
After reports of the Rape of Belgium and the sinking of RMS Lusitania in 1915, Rudyard came to see the war as a crusade for civilisation against barbarism and was even more keen that his son should see active service. He signed the necessary documents allowing John to leave for France with the rest of his battalion as soon as he turned eighteen, on 17th August 1915.
Within weeks, John Kipling would be dead, killed at the Battle of Loos, the largest British offensive on the Western Front up to that time, which resulted in over 60,000 casualties, including around 21,000 men killed.
Newly promoted to lieutenant, John went into battle for his first and only time on 27th September 1915. The 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards, was ordered to advance towards Chalk Pit Wood, located northeast of Loos-en-Gohelle. The men went over the top at 4 pm, crossing open ground in the face of withering machine-gun fire. Within an hour, the attack had stalled, and John had disappeared.
Intense fire and shelling made recovery of the dead and dying from no man's land an impossible task. The exact circumstances of John's death will never be known, but later reports indicated that he was last seen leading his men forward, possibly with a head wound.
John's parents were distraught upon learning that their son had been reported missing. For four years, they searched for any clue to his fate or whereabouts, using all their connections. Rudyard tracked down and interviewed men from his battalion, searched field hospitals, and wrote to senior military figures and the Red Cross. He even used contacts in neutral Sweden to check whether the Germans were holding John as a prisoner of war.
Yet all efforts came to nothing. Only in 1919, after the war had ended, did the Kiplings finally accept that their only son and youngest child was never coming back.
Those who were close to Rudyard Kipling noticed a marked change in him following the loss of his son. Having been a keen supporter of the war, he now grew critical. His famous two-line epigram Common Form, published in 1919, reads:
'If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied.'
The words have often been interpreted as reflecting not only his disillusionment, but perhaps also his guilt at having encouraged and arranged for his son to go to war.
Kipling's grief has also been closely associated with his poem My Boy Jack, published in 1916. Although the poem describes a young sailor lost at sea and does not explicitly refer to John, its themes of loss, uncertainty and a father's longing for news of his missing son have led many to interpret it as a reflection of Kipling's own personal tragedy.
Rudyard's search for John also led him to become closely involved with the Imperial War Graves Commission, with whom he served as literary advisor for the rest of his life. In this capacity, he coined many of the phrases and epitaphs that are featured in the Commission's cemeteries, including the haunting inscription 'A Soldier of the Great War, Known unto God', which was used to mark the graves of unidentified soldiers.
It was a terrible irony that, unknown to him, that same inscription would mark his own son's grave for many years. Indeed, Rudyard went to his own grave in 1936 without ever discovering where his son was buried.
The mystery surrounding John Kipling remained unsolved until 1992, when military historian Norm Christie, then a Records Officer for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, claimed to have identified his grave.
In September 1919, the body of an unidentified Irish Guards lieutenant was recovered from the Loos battlefield and subsequently buried in an unnamed grave at St. Mary's A.D.S. Cemetery. Christie's research showed that only three Irish Guards officers had been reported missing in the area of Chalk Pit Wood, with Kipling being the only lieutenant. This led to a new, named headstone being erected over his grave.
Although the identification was challenged in 2002, further research in 2016 supported Norm Christie's initial identification.
Today, John Kipling's headstone stands among the hundreds of graves at St. Mary's A.D.S. Cemetery, many of which still bear the inscription 'Known unto God'. His story serves as a poignant reminder of the personal tragedies behind the enormous losses of the Battle of Loos, and of the families who spent years searching for answers about the fate of their loved ones.
Comments