Egerton C C Lt 2nd West Riding Regiment
LIEUTENANT C. C. EGERTON
2ND BATTALION THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S (WEST RIDING REGIMENT)
CHARLES CALEDON EGERTON was the third and youngest son of General Sir Charles Comyn Egerton, G.C.B., D.S.O., and of Anna Wellwood, daughter of James Lawson Hill, Writer to the Signet, of Edinburgh.
He entered the School in 1900, and passed on to the R.M.C., Sandhurst, in 1904; was appointed Second Lieutenant in the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment, August, 1905, promoted Lieutenant in 1908, and was Adjutant of the Regiment from 1911 to 1914.
On the outbreak of War, though still a Subaltern, he was selected as Staff Captain of the 13th Brigade, 5th Division, to which the Regiment belonged, and in that capacity proceeded with the Brigade to Flanders, in August, 1914, and was present with it during the Retreat from Mons, at Le Cateau, Crépy-en-Valois, the Battles of the Marne and the Aisne, at La Bassée and the defence of Ypres, at St. Eloi, and at Hill 60, where he was killed by a fragment of shell striking him in the forehead. The 13th Brigade, which had captured the Hill, was under very heavy shell fire at the time. He fell on April 18th, 1915, and was buried in a cemetery on the ramparts of Ypres, adjoining the Lille gate of the town. Age 30.
He was three times mentioned in Despatches.
The General Officer Commanding the 2nd Army Corps wrote:-
“He was as gallant a soldier as ever walked, and we all shall mourn and miss him greatly.”
He married, in 1914, Madeleine, daughter of E. M. Clayton, of Cleagh-more, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway.
Source : Memorials Of Rugbeians Who Fell In The Great War Vol 1
