15/10/2026
THE EPITAPH OF VENGEANCE AT LIJSSENTHOEK CWGC
If you walk through Plot VI, Row A at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery near Poperinge, one headstone among the nearly 11,000 graves stops you in your tracks. It belongs to 27-year-old Driver Leland Wingate Fernald (Service No. 476603) of the 5th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery.
Carved into the Portland stone at the base of his grave is one of the most politically charged epitaphs on the entire Western Front:
"A VOLUNTEER FROM THE U.S.A. TO AVENGE THE LUSITANIA MURDER"
Born on 21 January 1889 in Three Rivers (Trois-Rivieres), Quebec, to American parents, Fernald grew up in Dover, New Hampshire, working as a painter and serving in the 1st California Cavalry. Though the US remained neutral in 1915, the sinking of the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915 (claiming around 1,200 lives, including 128 Americans) sparked outrage across North America.
Driven by Allied press accounts of an unprovoked "murder" and posters urging men to "Take up the sword of justice - avenge the Lusitania", Fernald crossed into British Columbia in November 1915 to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Fate dealt him a cruel irony: deployed to the Ypres Salient, he was mortally wounded by German shellfire and died at No. 10 Casualty Clearing Station at Lijssenthoek on 8 May 1916 - almost to the hour, one year after the Lusitania went down. His grieving parents in New Hampshire chose his epitaph so the world would know why their son went to war.
BENEATH THE WAVES
For decades, British governments maintained the Lusitania was an innocent liner carrying no live mu*****ns. When a French survivor and former army officer, Joseph Marichal, testified at the 1915 Mersey Inquiry that he heard a second blast beneath the dining room floor "similar to the rattling of a Maxim gun," Lord Mersey dismissed him. Yet when Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger of U-20 fired a single torpedo into her starboard side off the Old Head of Kinsale, it was a massive second explosion that sank the 31,550-ton liner in 18 minutes.
Modern underwater archaeology, declassified Whitehall files, and technical dives to the collapsing hull 93 metres down in the Celtic Sea tell a very different story:
Declassified Foreign Office papers from Kew reveal that ahead of an August 1982 salvage dive, the Ministry of Defence urgently warned divers of "danger to life and limb" from undeclared, highly dangerous war mu*****ns in the wreck. Foreign Office official Noel Marshall admitted behind closed doors that HMG had denied the presence of mu*****ns for nearly 70 years, warning colleagues that "this subject may yet - literally - blow up on us" and trigger lawsuits from American victims' families. That 1982 operation alone recovered 821 brass fuzes for 6-inch shells.
While the supplementary manifest listed 4,200 to 5,000 cases of Re*****on .303 r***e cartridges, 18 cases of fuzes, volatile aluminium powder, and 1,248 cases of 3-inch shrapnel shells, Whitehall long insisted the shells were "empty" and harmless. However, the Royal Artillery Historical Trust confirmed the shrapnel shells were shipped live - fitted with propellant charges, meaning each shell contained 1.25 lbs of Cordite MD alongside its burster charge, packed into unlined softwood crates in the forward hold below the baggage room.
Modern Dives and Lusitania Project 17: From the 2008 mu*****ns finds (which filmed vast quantities of .303 rounds and post-WWII Royal Navy Hedgehog depth charges from secret demolition ops) to the ongoing 3D photogrammetry surveys conducted since 2017 by Lusitania Project 17 (led by Gerry Brown and Peter McCamley), technical divers are racing against time to map the deteriorating forward holds and boiler rooms before the wreck collapses completely.
THE LEGAL STATUS
1. Built with Admiralty subsidies for conversion into an Armed Merchant Cruiser, the Lusitania was listed in Jane's Fighting Ships as an auxiliary reserve vessel. Combined with secret Admiralty orders instructing British merchant captains to ram U-boats on sight, traditional Prize Rules (requiring a submarine to surface and search a ship) were effectively dead.
2. Retaliating against the British hunger blockade, Berlin declared the waters around the British Isles a war zone (Kriegsgebiet) in February 1915, placing warnings in 50 US newspapers right beside Cunard's sailing adverts. Sailing as an Admiralty-subsidised auxiliary in a declared war zone while carrying millions of rounds of am******on and live cordite shells, under the brutal realities of 1915 naval warfare, she was a legitimate military target.
WHO WAS REALLY TO BLAME? CONSPIRACY OR CATASTROPHIC "FOUL-UP"?
Was it Kapitanleutnant Schwieger and Imperial Germany?: For firing without warning on a liner packed with non-combatants. While militarily justifiable under submarine warfare doctrine, it was a human catastrophe and strategic blunder that poisoned neutral opinion against Berlin.
Was it the British Admiralty? Weeks earlier, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill wrote to the Board of Trade that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany... and if some of it gets into trouble, better still." When the Lusitania docked in March 1915, the Admiralty sent destroyers to es**rt her. Yet on her fatal May voyage - despite 23 merchant ships recently being attacked in the area, and Room 40 codebreakers tracking U-20 along her path - no warnings of recent sinkings were relayed to Captain William Turner. Four destroyers (Lucifer, Legion, Linnet, and Laverock) sat idly in port at Milford Haven, and radio exchanges between the Admiralty and the ship from 5 to 7 May remain classified to this day. Whether it was a cold-blooded plot by figures like Intelligence Director Captain "Blinker" Hall, or a catastrophic bureaucratic foul-up by an Admiralty distracted by the Dardanelles and keen to scapegoat Captain Turner, the result was fatal.
Was it Cunard and US Authorities? For knowingly placing civilian men, women, and children directly above holds packed with live cordite shells and am******on to keep wartime supply lines flowing.
Driver Leland Wingate Fernald died in the mud of Flanders believing he was avenging an act of pure barbarism. Today, his headstone at Lijssenthoek stands as a poignant reminder of the power of wartime propaganda - and how ordinary soldiers pay the ultimate price for the secrets of empires.
Knowing what we know today from declassified Whitehall files, the live cordite shells in her hold, and the four destroyers left sitting in port while Room 40 tracked U-20, was the loss of the Lusitania a cold-blooded conspiracy, a catastrophic Admiralty foul-up, or a wartime murder - and who do you think truly bears the greatest blame? Tell us what you think in the comments!
Visiting Lijssenthoek?
You can find Driver L.W. Fernald in Plot VI, Row A, Grave 29. Stop by the visitor centre before walking the rows - it puts the human cost of the Ypres Salient casualty clearing stations into unforgettable perspective.
