Page 60 - Who Was Sapper Brown
P. 60
Epilogue
The author visited the cemetery at Mathiatis a second time, on 20 May 2013, before leaving Cyprus at the
end of his posting, to pay his final respects at this lone soldier’s grave. A shepherd and his flock of grazing
goats came through the field and up to the cemetery during this visit, which probably explains why the
cemetery is not overgrown with weeds. They had obviously been there many a time before. The sight of
the shepherd and his flock would have been just as familiar to Private Splain in the Cyprus of 1878.
This apparently idyllic scene belies a deep symbolism. The feverish illness unwittingly caught by so many
soldiers through drinking infected goats’ milk in 1878 may well have been the cause of Private Splain’s
death in the first place.
A Highlander’s grave, Cyprus, May 2013
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