Name
Austin E Deprez
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
12/11/1915
29
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Captain
Royal Field Artillery
C Bty. 62nd Bde.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
VERMELLES BRITISH CEMETERY
I. B. 1.
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:
Captain Deprez was the youngest son of the late Mr. E. Deprez, a prominent Art Critic, and leading member of the firm of Colnaghi & Co. He was the last but one of the direct male survivors of the ancient and noble family of Des Prez d' Outre Meuse, Hereditary Standard-Bearers of Liege. In him St. Edmund's has lost one of the best and most admirable of her sons.
We print below an appreciation of Austin Deprez try Father J. Whitfield, Military Chaplain to the let Cameron Highlanders. But since this reached us, we have received some details of the manner of his death. He had gone up to his most forward observation pest, and, though he had warning of the approach of a German shell, remained at his post. "There is nothing of Austin's body left as a child he was always for the guns - he has died for them now.”
Father Whitfield writes:- "With a great shock I happened upon the portrait of Captain Deprez beneath the single word "Killed " in a pictorial daily. I had run across him a month before in the trenches, and a few days previously had written to him with a view to seeing him again. Now meetings were to be no more, intercourse was at an end; there remained, however, the consolation of prayer. My thoughts spontaneously turned back across twenty years to the small boy at St. Hugh's, and thinking over the seven years he spent at Alma Mater, I found in him two characteristics which we praise in our patron, docitis, amabilis: To good ability he joined a conscientiousness in work which enabled him to keep well up among classmates much his senior. In the playing fields he excelled, and was a member of the First Xl. both in Cricket and Football, and he displayed in his games the same keen capability which marked his work. It was in no limited sense that he was a good sportsman. He had an appreciation, early developed, of "the things a fellow doesn't do," and the strength of will to avoid them: as on the field, so in life, "he played the game."
Making choice of a military career, after a year with an army crammer, he passed into Woolwich, and thence obtained his commission in the Royal Field Artillery in 1905. In times of peace promotion is slow among the gunners, and it was only after the outbreak of war that he obtained his captaincy. He had married in October, 1918, Miss Evelyn Lambkin, daughter of Francis J. Lambkin, Esq. The ceremony took place at St, Mary's, Cadogan Street and it is worth recalling that it was the President who performed it, and that he was assisted by the Rev. J. Driscoll, M.A., who had been Prefect when Captain Deprez was a boy at the College, and also by the Rev. B. Langstaff, who had been a student with him at the same time. He leaves one child, a daughter, born in India early in the present year.
He was a frequent guest of the College, often as a member of visiting elevens, and was at the Edmundian Dinner whenever his duties allowed. I recall that when I finally left the College in 1908 he wrote to me his keen appreciation of what that severance must mean.
Soon after the outbreak of war, he was brought home from India .to engage in the training of the new army. He brought his battery out to France at the end of September and had been less than six weeks in action when he met his death.
Standing by the grave, marked by red lettering on a white cross, in the British Cemetery opposite to that chateau of Vermelles which is for all time one of the historic sites of this war, the consoling thought came to my mind that though his life is finished so rapidly its work will endure.. For to succeeding generations of Edmundians the name of Austin Deprez will surely speak from the games boards, and the College Roll of Honour, an inspiration to that path quo fas et gloria ducunt.
Meanwhile, of your charity pray for the soul of Austin E. Deprez, Captain R.F.A., who was killed in action on Nov. 12th, 1915, in his thirtieth year."
Acknowledgments
Jonty Wild, Di Vanderson, The Edmundian (1814-1819) – The contemporary magazine of St Edmund’s College
