Cuthbert Buckle was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, on 5th April 1892. He was the eldest son of Cuthbert and Muriel Buckle. The Buckle family were major landowners in Banstead from the 17th Century onwards (Buckles Way is named after them) and Cuthbert senior lived in Banstead before emigrating to America in 1885, where he established a dog breeding business.

Cuthbert attended the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, between 1906 and 1910. He was a “rather backward student” but made up for it by being “persistent and steadfast... not brilliant but thoroughly good and honourable.” After leaving school, he emigrated to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and ran a tea and rubber plantation with his uncle Archibald.

When war broke out, Cuthbert joined the Ceylon Planters RiMle Corps, a volunteer defence force. They sailed to London to do their bit for the Empire. Upon arrival in December 1914, Cuthbert attested with the RiMle Brigade but he didn’t serve with his new unit for long as he was granted a commission as a 2nd lieutenant in the Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent) Regiment in February 1915. He was posted to the 6th Battalion and arrived in France in October.

The 6th Royal West Kents missed the Mirst day of the Battle of the Somme and spent the second day clearing trenches of wounded men and the dead. At 3:15am on the third day, 3rd July 1916, the leading two companies of the Royal West Kents, including the platoon led by Cuthbert, assaulted the German front line in front of the fortiMied village of Ovillers. They took the trench with little loss. The two supporting companies charged past them and into a “perfect hail of bullets” and the attack shuddered to a halt. The Kentish men held on to the old German front line but were cut off from reinforcement by machine-gun Mire. Cuthbert remained cheerful and kept on smiling. He displayed “conspicuous courage and disregard of safety” and disobeying orders to get down, he walked up and down the parapet directing his men’s riMe Mire and grenade throwing. He was shot in the head and died.

Cuthbert was reported as missing and was later conMirmed as killed in action. The 6th Royal West Kents lost 394 men killed, wounded or missing on that day. Only one ofMicer from Cuthbert’s company returned.

Cuthbert is buried in Serre Road Cemetery No.2 and he is commemorated on the Episcopal High School memorial, the Banstead war memorial and on the wooden panels in the Lady Chapel in All Saints. He was 24.

John Wilkinson