Lieutenant William Douglass SCOTT

4th Battalion, Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
Born 8 June 1892 in St Alban’s Quad, Merton College
Killed in action 22 August 1917, aged 25
Commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Belgium.

William Scott was the son of George Rodney Scott, a Fellow of the College, and Florence Mary, née Seymour.

He was educated at Rugby School, leaving in 1910 to attend McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

At the outbreak of war he was unable to obtain admission to a Canadian regiment as he was short sighted; he therefore returned to England and received a commission in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry in January, 1915. (His grandfather had served with the regiment at Waterloo.)

He was made temporary Captain in May 1916; he was wounded in July, and again in November of that year. After this second wounding he suffered from ‘trench fever’, but was able to return to France at the end of May the following year.

He was killed in action while leading his company in a successful attack on enemy trenches near the village of St Julien, on 22 August 1917.

GK Rose, in his book The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, described Scott’s death:

Scott had been hit already in the advance and behaved finely in refusing aid until he had dispatched a message to Headquarters. While he was doing so three or four bullets struck him simultaneously and he died.