Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1915, Major Nigel William Francis Baynes, 3rd (Reserve) Battalion attached to1st Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment, died from complications due to severe wounds received in December of 1914 during the fighting on the Western Front. He had been transported home to England and is buried in St. Peter’s Roman Catholic churchyard in Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

Major Baynes’ father was a baronet from a family which had settled itself in Yorkshire from Scotland in the twefth century. He served in the South African War from 1899 to 1900 for which service he received the Queen’s Medal with two clasps, and in Northern Nigeria with the West African Frontier Force from 1901 to 1904. He arrived in France at the outbreak of the Great War and was severely wounded whilst leading his Company into action at Festubert just before Christmas of 1914.

Nigel, from Newton Abbott in Devon, was 36 years old and married with a ten-year-old daughter.