Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1916, Second Lieutenant Richard Henry Marchant, 9th Battalion, The East Surrey Regiment, was killed in action on the Western Front.

Prior to his commission he had served as a sergeant with the Royal Army Medical Corps. In September of 1915 he landed at Boulogne-sur-Mer with the 9th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment (part of the 72nd Brigade in the 24th Division) for service on the Western Front. They marched across France into the reserve for the British assault at Loos, during which they suffered heavy casualties. He is buried in the Tyne Cot Cemetery in West-Vlaanderen, Belgium.

Second Lieutenant Marchant’s brother, Gunner Charles William Marchant, The Royal Garrison Artillery, was also killed in action during the Great War (date unknown). He had served in the Boer War and been awarded the South Africa Medal with four bars, considered a “hard-won” medal given the deprivations and the nature of the enemy.

Very little else has come to light on the brothers except for the photographs sent by their mother to the Imperial War Museum with a poignant note referring to her “only sons.”

The brothers were from Windsor in Berkshire; Richard was 27 years old.