Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1914, Captain Alan George Tritton, 3rd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, was killed in action, shot by a sniper during the fighting near Le Touret, Pas de Calais, in France.

Educated at Winchester, he attended Sandhurst in 1899, and was gazetted to the 1st Battalion, Coldstream Guards in 1900. He served in the South African War a year later and also taking part in the Cape Colony operations. In 1906 and 1907 he was Adjutant of the Guards Depot, and then Adjutant of the Coldstream Guards until 1910. After being promoted to Captain, he acted as A.D.C., to G.O. Commanding-In-Chief Western Command, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Mackinnon for two years, and then served with the Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders. The first action that Captain Tritton saw was in August of 1914 at Landrecies, and he is mentioned in the War Diary as “playing a conspicuous part” in the fighting; a week later he was wounded at Villers-Cotterets, just before the Battle of the Marne.

Three days before Christmas the battalion moved to the trenches at Rue de l’Epubette, near Bethune, and it was there that he lost his life. He was mentioned twice in despatches, once posthumously. He is buried in the Le Touret Military Cemetery. Alan, from Great Leighs in Essex, was 32 years old.