LIEUTENANT DONALD PERCEVAL LYNDEN-BELL
ROYAL IRISH FUSILIERS
25TH APRIL 1915 AGE 19
BURIED: NEW IRISH FARM CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
On 25 April 1915 the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers, after a long forced march the previous day, launched an attack at St Julien in support of the Canadians. Three days earlier the Canadians had been the victims of the German's first gas attack, which had been used on them on the 24th too. The attack on the 25th was a desperate, scrambled affair where, according to the Official History, the Fusiliers "were now called on to do the impossible".
Nineteen-year-old Lieutenant Lynden-Bell, described by his captain as "a brave lad", died in the attack. Seventy-five members of the Royal Irish Fusiliers died that day, the bodies of all but ten of them never recovered; they are commemorated on the Menin Gate.
Tadley and District History Society have published some valuable research on Donald Lynden-Bell, including the facts that the Lynden-Bells were a distinguished military family, and that Donald's younger brother, Lachlan, who survived the war, called his son Donald after his dead brother.