Active-Service Diary - 21 January 1917-1 July 1917

The short, but poignant and action filled diary of a public school officer who fought with the Irish Guards in the Ypres Salient.
EDWARD HORNBY SHEARS was born in Liverpool On December 4, 1890. His preparatory school was The Leas, Hoylake (1900-1904). In July, 1904, he obtained a Foundation Scholarship at Bradfield, and in December 1908 a History Exhibition at Trinity College, Oxford. He went up to Oxford in October, 1909, and obtained a ‘second’ in ‘Mods’ in 1910, and a ‘first’ in ‘Greats’ in 1913. In September, 1913, he passed into the Home Civil Service, and was appointed to the Secretaries’ Department of the General Post Office. A year later (October, 1914) he became Principal Private Secretary to the Postmaster-General, Mr. (now Sir Charles) Hobhouse. He had been refused official permission to join the army at the outbreak of the War, but he received it in May, 1915, and obtained a commission in the 3/4th Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment. A few months later he was promoted to lieutenant. After training for a year and a half in England, and having no apparent prospect of being sent to the front, he obtained a transfer to the Irish Guards, in which he received his commission as ensign in November, 1916. In January, 1917, he joined the 1st Battalion in France, where he was shortly promoted to lieutenant (dating from October 18, 1916). He was killed in action at Boesinghe on July 4, 1917, and on the following day he was buried at Canada Farm, Elverdinghe, near Ypres.