LIEUTENANT COLONEL HUMPHREY FRANCIS WILLIAM BIRCHAM, DSO
KING'S ROYAL RIFLE CORPS
23RD JULY 1916 AGE 41
BURIED: CORBIE COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION, FRANCE
Lieutenant Colonel Bircham's widow chose his inscription, highlighting the fact that he, the officer commanding the Second Battalion the King's Royal Rifle Corps, had been with his men when he was killed during their attack on the German trenches near High Wood. As Dr Peter Hodgkinson remarks in 'British Infantry Battalion Commanders in the First World War' (2015), being with your men as they went into battle was a much respected - though very dangerous - activity for senior officers.
Bircham was thought by his men to be 'a great chap', accessible, thoughtful for their well-being and always prepared to be where there was danger. Although on 23 July his adjutant had protested that it was much too dangerous for him to be in the front line, Bircham was not to be dissuaded, 'You know very well ... where a Colonel of the Rifles should be on such occasions'. Unfortunately the adjutant was right. Bircham was hit by a shell and died later the same day. And the battalion attack failed in the face of a fierce German counter attack.
Bircham, an Old Etonian, was a regular soldier. He joined the army in 1896 and served during the South African War where he was seriously wounded and won the DSO. In 1908 he married Gladys Violet Willes but neither in the 1911 census nor in any of his obituaries are children mentioned. So, 'those he left behind' meant his wife, his father and mother, who died in 1922 and 1941 respectively and his three siblings. Gladys died in Cheltenham in 1963.