The Lesson was read from “The Wisdom of Solomon” ch.2, 1-5, ch.3, 1-9 There are in this life few occasions given to us, when we may pay honour and respect to our dearest friends. This service of thanksgiving is one, one which may come to all of us. For we are gathered here together from out of our several routines, and from different associations to give thanks to God for the life and friendship of William Leslie Green, and to commend his spirit into God’s eternal keeping. Those of you who knew Captain Green better than I did, will, I know, make your own thanksgiving, - thanksgiving for his selfless courage and sacrifice in the just and noble causes of his Country, thanksgiving for his service of his fellow-men, his comrades, both in war and peace. I would but pay honour to one thing in him which I came to know and honour - his faith, from which sprang a courage that rarely can have been surpassed. Some of you know, - better even than I, - that quality of courage and gallantry that won for him a recommendation from his Divisional Commander for the award of the Victoria Cross; that gallantry to which today his son bears proud testimony upon his breast. Yet, I suggest, there is another gallantry, a higher courage still. It is one thing, when the drums roll out, to hear your country’s call; it is one thing, in the heat of battle, and in the knowledge of great responsibilities, to show the stuff you’re made of! It is quite another to show that same quality of courage in the privacy of the shadows from your own four walls, in the pain and frustration from a shattered body. For him, who with his beloved wife and family had known the depths and, - because of it, touched the truest heights of happiness, there yet remained one last battle to be fought - alone! He who all his life had sought to do what God intended him to do, and who had taught his

family to accept whate’er befall them as the Will of God, yet had to make himself one further, greater renunciation, the submission - devastating to an active man - the submission to becoming a permanent invalid, a passenger. This is his triumph, to which I pay my deep and sincere respects, that he, whose career was to us so cruelly handicapped and thus cut short, won through to that serenity in suffering, his faith in God was such, the Grace of God in him was such, that if it was God’s will that he must suffer thus, he would yet “soldier on”! For our task, as he would have said, is not only to uphold, but also to make traditions. Such courage and such faith only the Grace of God can supply. It is, and was, his gift. But such is the Mercy of God that he was spared the torture of protracted suffering. Though willing, that final sacrifice was not demanded of him. In the very hour of his victory, God called him to his rest. “God proved him, and found him worthy for himself.” For him, then, who would have nothing to do with tears, let there be no tears, but only praise and honour and the tenderest memory of a noble soul. So I would, in your name, pass on to his wife, his son, his daughters, his mother and his family, whilst sharing in their thanksgiving, our deep sympathy and sincered condolances in their loss. For their loss is our loss, though indeed it be his gain, for we shall miss him, even as they do now. To Captain William Leslie Green, MC, MM, late the 1st Bn. The Sherwood Foresters. Died of Wounds. God proved him, and found him worthy for himself.