Name
Edward James Hugh Meynell (MC)
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
04/10/1918
22
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Captain
South Staffordshire Regiment
1st 5th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Military Cross
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
TINCOURT NEW BRITISH CEMETERY
V. J. 44.
France
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
St Edmunds College Memorial, Old Hall Green
Biography
The following text was transcribed from the The Edmundian (1814-1819) – The contemporary magazine of St Edmund’s College:
"Jim" was the oldest of the three brothers Meynell whom we have known at St. Edmund's. He came to St. Hugh’s in 1910, and passed in due course into the Rudiments and rose steadily through the classes until he left it the class of Grammar in 1912. In all departments of school life he acquitted himself with great credit, in the class room, in the playing-fields, in fact everywhere. From the first he betrayed an earnestness beyond his years. relieved however by a keen sense of humour. The casual observer would wonder at the seriousness of thus tall rather sparsely made boy with the direct glance and rather deliberate speech. Those who knew him came to look for the beginnings of a smile, shewn only by the eyes and by a hardly perceptible trick he had of contracting his nostrils. It was the quiet humour of one who could enjoy a situation hugely, without loud laughter.
Eminently reasonable he was very determined. You felt that to enlist his aid in any cause, it was necessary to shew, Oat merely to tell him, that the cause was right : for your comfort you knew that, the resolve once taken, he was not to be moved from it. Altogether, his was as self-contained a character as you will readily find, with independence which assorted well with his lithe athletic for form. Beneath the surface, informing all his life, was a deeply religious spirit, brought here front his home and developed and deepened. For popularity such a boy cares but little: but it came unsought and changed hint not at all.
It would be wrong, however, to consider him at all moody or morose. His laughter, when not restricted to that ghost of a smile, was full throated enough: and at times his rather deeper note would lead the lighter rippling merriment of his companions.
For a short while after leaving school, Jim was in business: in 1915, to no one's surprise, he volunteered for service, being commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in August of that year. In January of 1916 he was with the South Staffordshire Regiment, and took part in the following July, in the attack at Gommecourt. Six months later he was invalided home with trench-fever: and returned to service. Again he came home, wounded this time and severely, by a bomb. In April last year he returned to the front: two months later he received his Captaincy. He distinguished himself in the terrible fighting for the Canal and the Hindenburg line during September last; the 46th division were the admired of the whole army, by their courage at this time. it was with this division that Jim most distinguished himself. There is more than a little irony in the fact that it was after the heaviest fighting, that in the night of October 3rd lie received the mortal wound: he died a few hours later, in the early morning of the 4th.
So there passed another of our fine fellows: a fine. Catholic, for he made it his chief concern to approach the Sacraments whenever possible: a fine soldier "a gallant companion" in the words of a Lieutenant Colonel "a fearless leader of men and a man that was loved by all who knew him."
While we assure his bereaved parents and all his family, of the prayers and sympathy of Edmundian friends, we are supremely confident that God has graciously accepted - and rewarded - the sacrifice of his splendid youth.
Acknowledgments
Jonty Wild, Di Vanderson, The Edmundian (1814-1819) – The contemporary magazine of St Edmund’s College
