Wednesday 5th June 1918
Troops with experience of combat or simply of being in the front line tend to be fatalistic. There is a common saying that you will be wounded or killed if a bullet or shell has your number on it. Sadly yesterday in Palestine a bullet had the Number 201304 on it. This was the service number of twenty year-old Private R S Lyons, from Bournemouth.
The 1st/5th Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment is in the front line and the enemy aircraft were active. This occasioned a lot of fire from machine guns and rifles into the air in the direction of the offending craft. The laws of physics tell us that what goes up must come down and one of these bullets came back down into the head of Private Lyons as he looked up following the course of an enemy machine, killing him instantly(1)
Source: X550/6/8
(1) Private Lyons is buried at Ramleh War Cemetery south-east of Tel Aviv
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