Guy Compton and Rex Compton

guy and rex compton plaque
 

Remembering my Dad's older brothers, who died when he was a small boy. 

Guy Compton, 1894-1917, and Rex Compton, 1897-1917

Both brothers enlisted as privates at the outset of war, Rex straight from school.  Guy joined the Great Sussex Regiment as one of 'Lowther's Lambs' and served with Edmund Blunden, who quotes him in one passage of "Undertones of War". He fought in the Battle of the Boar's Head, a notorious diversionary assault the day before the main Somme offensive, known as 'the day Sussex died' and later on the Somme. Rex served in Gallipoli, Egypt, Palestine and on the Somme.  The brothers, both junior officers by now, died a couple of weeks apart in the mud of Flanders during the third battle of Ypres, but before the carnage of Passchaendale.

P. Compton dedicates this plaque to them both.