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Christina Drummond

Captain Wyndham Knatchbull-Hugessen (3rd Baron Brabourne), 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards


Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1915, Captain Wyndham Knatchbull-Hugessen (3rd Baron Brabourne) of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, was killed in action in France.

On the previous day the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards took up reserve positions near Neuve Chapelle, and the following day sustained heavy casualties as they crossed the Rue Tilleloy. Sixteen officers and 325 other soldiers were lost that day, according to the battalion’s war diary. Captain Knatchbull-Hugessen (known as Lord Brabourne, and connected to Earl Mountbatten) was one of 24 British peers to die in the Great War, and over a hundred sons of peers also lost their lives. He has no known grave, but his name is included on the La Touret Memorial in Bethune, France, and there is a memorial for him in his village’s parish church. A noted ornithologist (he co-wrote 'The Birds of South America' in 1912), he was one of the 112 peers who voted against the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, which deprived the House of Lords of its absolute power of veto on legislation.

Wyndham, from Smeeth in Kent, was 29 years old.

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