The grim realities of the war are daily being brought home to the people of Bournemouth, and a scene witnessed at Boscombe this morning, when a young soldier who had died from wounds was laid in a soldier’s grave, gave a new and more solemn reminder of the stern meaning of war and of the many such burials happening beyond our ken.

The young hero over whom to-day the “last post” was sounded was Private William F.Stevens, of the ‘C’ Company, 1st Wiltshire Regiment, twenty-three years old, whose hip was badly shattered by a shrapnel wound in the Battle of Mons.

He lay on the field of battle fifteen hours after being rendered helpless, and this fact, it is believed, spoilt any chances he had of recovery, for since his admission to the Boscombe Military Hospital his case had been regarded as a critical, if not a hopeless, once, and terminated fatally last Monday.

The bereaved parents, who were present at this morning’ solemn ceremony, have two more soldier sons – one in the Wiltshire Regiment now in France, and the third in India.

The grief of the parents, great as it obviously was, must have been assuaged by the consoling note of a military funeral and the sympathy of the onlookers.

The deceased soldier hails from Wroughton near Swindon, but it was his humble parents’ wish that he should be buried where he died.

A pathetic interest was added by the presence in the long cortege of soldiers, of between twenty and thirty of the deceased’s wounded comrades.

The little band of them – a strange mixture of all kinds of regiments – walked together and with an emotion known only to themselves and unbetrayed by a firm upper lip, they paid their impressively silent tribute to their dead comrade.

One of the heroes peeped over a bandage which almost wholly concealed his face from view; another had the crown of his head swathed in white; whileothers were either nursing an injured arm or still obviously recovering from injuries to other party of the body.

All wore their khaki coats, most of them battle-stained from the strenuous days of the great retirement from Belgium.

Military honours in the midst of this striking and unique setting seemed but an incidental feature of a memorable ceremony.

The other soldiers who made up the procession commenced to assemble in the vicinity of the Hospital about eleven o’clock.

The units, which lined up outside the Hospital and extended in a long double line towards King’s Park, included the “G” and “H” Companies of the 7th Hants Territorials under the command of Capt.Palmer, the 6th Hants Reserve Battery R.F.A. under the command of Capt. Langley Taylor, with a firing party and bugle party, also of the 7th Hants.

The gun carriage and team which, drawn by six horses, waited outside the Hospital, belonged to teh 1at Wessex Royal Engineers Field Company and was in charge of Corporal Pratt.

Taken from Bournemouth Daily Echo, Saturday October 24, 1914.