Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1916, Lieutenant Henry James Boyton, 4th Battalion, Grenadier Guards, was killed in action on the Somme.

The only son of Sir Harry Boyton, Member of Parliament for East Marylebone, he had attended Harrow and later Jesus College, Cambridge, for which he rowed in the Henley Regatta. He took a commission in the Royal Fusiliers while still at Cambridge and was promoted to Lieutenant in January of 1914. After the outbreak of the Great War he went to Malta with his regiment, 1st City of London, and then on to France in March of 1915 to join the 25th Brigade of the 8th Division. He fought at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, and was wounded during the Battle of Aubers Ridge. On his recovery he was posted to a reserve battalion of his regiment, in which he became Captain and Adjutant. In July of 1916 he transferred to the Grenadier Guards and in October left for the Western Front, where two months later he was killed in action during the Battle of the Somme.

He is buried in the Combles Communal Cemetery Extension, Department de la Somme, Picardy in France. His name appears on a memorial at All Saints Churchyard in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and on the cenotaph at the East Finchley Cemetery and Crematorium. Henry, from Regent’s Park in London, was 25 years old.