Great War Portraits

Taken from the Roll of Honour 'Memorials of Old Birkonians 1914-1918' Birkenhead School, Liverpool, 1920.
 
Second Lieutenant N. C. Marsh 1st Battalion The King's (Liverpool Regiment).
 
Nicholas Clayton Marsh, elder son of Kenrick Clayton Marsh of Hoylake, was born on November 14, 1895, and was killed in action at Cuinchy, in the Battle of Loos, on September 25, 1915.
 
He entered the school in 1905 and left in 1912, and was in the cricket XI and football XV. On leaving school he spent time in France and then entered Lloyds Bank in Liverpool. On the outbreak of war he enlisted in the 4th Cheshires, and seven months later obtained a commission in the King's Liverpool Regiment. In June he went to France, and was attached to the 1st Battalion, and was killed in an attack three months later.
 
His Colonel wrote (to his parents): 'On September 25 the battalion was ordered to attack a very strong position which the enemy had held for many months. "B" and "D" Companies led the attack, your boy commanding a platoon in the former. The attack, though unsuccessful, was most gallantly carried out. Nothing could have exceeded the bravery of your son, whose body was recovered ahead of all others, and very close to the enemy's wire entanglements. Once again please accept the deepest sympathy and the regret of us all, and my own personal sense of loss in an officer who had endeared himself to us all by his charm of manner and devotion to duty, and who died as a gallant British officer at the head of his men.'