“When you go home, tell them of us and say, ‘For your tomorrow, they gave their today‘”
“When you go home, tell them of us and say, ‘For your tomorrow, we gave our today’” is a military saying (popular on Memorial Day) that has been printed on many images. Authorship and the exact wording are both uncertain.
“Here is one (epitaph—ed.) from a British graveyard in France,” many newspapers printed on August 24, 1918: “When you go home. tell them of us and say, ‘For your tomorrow they gave their today.’”
“When you go home, tell them of us, and say for their Tomorrow, we have given our Today” is the version that was printed in many newspapers in October 1918.
“EPITAPHS FOR THE SLAIN (For a British graveyard in France) When you go home, tell them of us and say: For your to-morrow, these gave their to-day” was printed in the book The Great War in Verse and Prose (1919), edited by James Elgin Wetherell. The book Inscriptions Suggested for War Memorials (1919) by Cecil Harcourt Smith has the same form, and credits English poet John Maxwell Edmonds (1875-1958). It is uncertain if Edmonds was inspired by the epitaph written by Simonides to honor the Spartans who fell at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.
“When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today” is the form that was used for the memorial epitaph of the Battle of Kohima (1944).
“They gave their tomorrow for our today” and “They gave their tomorrows for our todays” are similar sayings.
Wikipedia: Battle of Kohima
The Battle of Kohima (together with the intertwined Battle of Imphal) proved the turning point of the Japanese U-Go offensive into India in 1944 during the Second World War of 1939-1945. The battle took place in three stages from 4 April to 22 June 1944 around the town of Kohima, the capital of Nagaland in northeast India.
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Memorial
The War Cemetery in Kohima of 1,420 Allied war dead is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The cemetery lies on the slopes of Garrison Hill, in what was once the Deputy Commissioner’s tennis court. The epitaph carved on the memorial of the 2nd British Division in the cemetery has become world-famous as the Kohima Epitaph. It reads:
When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, we gave our today
The verse is attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds (1875–1958), and is thought to have been inspired by the epitaph written by Simonides to honour the Spartans who fell at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.
Wikipedia: John Maxwell Edmonds
John Maxwell Edmonds (21 January 1875 – 18 March 1958) was an English classicist, poet, and dramatist who is notable as the author of celebrated epitaphs.
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Epitaphs
Edmonds is credited with authorship of a famous epitaph in the War Cemetery in Kohima which commemorates the fallen of the Battle of Kohima in April 1944.
When you go home, tell them of us and say
For your tomorrow, we gave our today.
24 August 1918, Asbury Park (NJ) Evening Press, “War Epitaphs,” pg. 4, col. 3:
Here is one from a British graveyard in France: “When you go home. tell them of us and say, ‘For your tomorrow they gave their today.’”
24 August 1918, The Patriot (Harrisburg, PA), “War Epitaphs Being Collected by British,” pg. 12, col. 6:
London, Aug. 23.—For the proposed national war mission (other newspapers have “museum,” not “mission”—ed.) here, a collection of war epitaphs is being made. Here is one from a British graveyard in France:
“When you go home tell them of us and say,
‘For your tomorrow they gave their today.’”
Google Books
1 October 1918, The North American Review, “A Judas Peace” by William Roscoe Thayer, pg. 514:
Over the grave of a British soldier in France is carved this epitaph, which is all the more poignant because it is so simple:
When you go home. tell them of us and say,
‘For your tomorrow they gave their today.’
Newspapers.com
27 October 1918, Greensboro (NC) Daily News, “Kaiser and Boozer on the Run” by William T. Ellis, pg. 11, cols. 1-2:
A British soldier’s epitaph in France is said to read:
“When you go home, tell them of us, and say for their Tomorrow, we have given our Today.”
Google Books
The Great War in Verse and Prose
Edited by James Elgin Wetherell
Toronto, ON: A. T. Wilgress
1919
Pg. 153:
EPITAPHS FOR THE SLAIN
(For a British graveyard in France)
When you go home, tell them of us and say:
For your to-morrow, these gave their to-day.
Newspapers.com
29 April 1920, The Evening News (Harrisburg, PA), “The Cosmopolite,” pg. 10, col. 3:
These were the aims for which our soldiers fought and died. As one epitaph in France reads:
“When you go home, tell them of us, and say,
For their Tomorrow, we have given our Today.”
19 August 1995, The Times (London, UK), “Guilty or shameful?” by Philip Howard, pg. 1:
The epitaph for the Allied dead at Kohima caught that laconic simplicity, in which classical understatement is more moving than sentimental gush. The Times published it again last week: When you go home, tell them of us and say For your tomorrow these gave their today. This has the monolithic power of Simonides’ untranslatable epitaph on the Spartan dead while saving civilisation at Thermopylae: Go tell the Spartans, tourist coaching by, That here obedient to their words we lie. Like Japanese, shame-society Spartans were expected to commit hara-kiri rather than surrender. As usual on military memorials, gravestones and service sheets, The Times published the epitaph wrong and without attribution, as it is carved on the Kohima memorial. The correct version, originally published in The Times, goes: “For your tomorrows these gave their today”. This plural is stronger, because the brief lives of the heroes won successive futures for generations of survivors.
Some say this epitaph is so shame-agedly good that it must have been written by Simonides, or somebody else from the Greek Anthology. Others attribute it to Housman but it is a bit dry for him. It was in fact written by John Edmonds, a shy classical scholar who went up to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1894, and devoted his life until his death in 1958 to scholarship, teaching Classics at Girton and Newnham, and writing majestic epitaphs published in The Times.
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Huw Williams
@YnysDeullyn
Church of the Holy Nativity Cogan
@penllanparish #RemembranceSunday “When You Go Home, Tell Them of Us And Say, For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Out Today”. Angof ni chant fod.
5:57 AM · Nov 8, 2020·Twitter Web App
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Canadian Armed Forces
@CanadianForces
“When you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow we gave our today.”
So many answered the call, so many lost their lives.
Today, we remember all Veterans and thank them for their service and sacrifice. #RemembranceDay #CanadaRemembers #LestWeForget
9:00 AM · Nov 11, 2020·Twitter Media Studio