Who was John Edmondson?

Answer 1

John Maxwell Edmonds 1875-1958. He was an English Classicist who had put together a collection of epitaphs for W.W.1 in 1916.Amongst them were the words used on the Kohima Memorial to the 2nd Infantry Div.who repulsed the Japanese 15th Army, a force of 100,000 men who invaded India in March 1944 in Op. U go. The words were used for the memorial as a suggestion by Major John Etty-Leal, the GSO2 of the 2nd Div. another classical scholar. The verse is thought to have been inspired by the Greek Lyric Poet Simonides of Ceos (556-468 BC) who wrote after the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC,"Go Tell The Spartans,Thou That Passest By, That Faithful To Their Precepts Here We Lie". The verse on the Kohima Memorial, copied on war memorials around the world, reads "When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Their Tomrrows, We Gave Our Today".