Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1914, Captain Malcolm Arthur Russell Bell, 54th Sikhs, Frontier Force, the Indian Army, was killed in action on the Western Front.

The eldest son of an advocate and Sheriff-Substitute (a local judge appointed by the Sheriff) of Stirlingshire, he was educated at St Salvator’s School, St Andrews, and Fettes College, from where he went on to attend the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. In 1900 he was commissioned into the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Two years later he was transferred to the Indian Army, where he saw action on the North-West frontier against the Darwesh Khel Waziris; and in 1908 he was present at operations in the Bazar Valley campaign, being promoted to Captain shortly thereafter.

At the outbreak of the Great War Captain Bell volunteered for service and was attached to the 58th Rifles, Frontier Force, Meerut Division. On the day of his death he was ordered to support a part of the line where the enemy had broken through. As he led his men towards the German trenches he was shot through the head by a sniper, and died almost immediately. The Divisional Chaplain buried him in a small burial ground on the Bethune-Richebourg Road, near Le Touret, four miles east of Bethune.

Malcolm, from Edinburgh, ws 34 years old.