MOTHER'S ONLY ONE
DEARLY LOVED

SAPPER FRANK ALFRED LEVESON CURZON

ROYAL ENGINEERS

23RD MARCH 1918 AGE 24

BURIED: ROYE NEW BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE


Frank Curzon was his mother's only child. His father, Frank Joseph Curzon, died when he was three. His mother, Florence Stringer, remarried in 1909, a 'professional trainer of horses', ten years younger than herself and a 'resident United States of America'.
Curzon served in the Royal Engineers as a signaller with the 47th Heavy Artillery Brigade. He was killed in action on 23 March 1918 and buried originally in Marchelepot British Cemetery, which almost immediately fell into German hands. It was August 1920 before his body was exhumed and reburied at Roye, and it may have been even later than this before his next-of-kin were asked to choose an inscription.
In the summer of 1916, Frank had married Margaret Shepherd. She would have been his next of kin, presumably even after she remarried in December 1919. But when the time came for the choice to be made, Margaret was dead so the next-of-kinship reverted to his mother and she could once more claim him for herself:

Mother's only one
Dearly loved