LIEUTENANT PETER CLEMENT LAYARD
SUFFOLK REGIMENT
23RD AUGUST 1918 AGE 22
BURIED: DOUCHY-LES-AYETTES BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
George Somes Layard was a well-known writer and this inscription is a quotation from the book he wrote about his son, 'Peter Clement Layard,Extracts from his Letters with a Character Sketch by his Father'. Father, having given himself prominence on his son's headstone, dedicates the book to, "Peter's mother, for of all people in the world he loved her best". George Somes Layard gives numerous instances of Peter's exhuberant approach to life, and of his demonstrative temperament, but as for actually going "laughing into the arms of death" ... Peter was returning over the ground he and his men had covered during an attack to see if he could find any of his wounded men when he was shot dead by a sniper.