Second Lieutenant Henry Burgh GAIR (1902)

1st Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment, attached to 206th (Glasgow) Field Company, Royal Engineers
Born 10 July 1882 in Toxteth, Liverpool
Died of wounds 15 May 1918, aged 35
Buried at Bagneux British Cemetery, Gézaincourt, Somme, France. Also commemorated on the Bushey war memorial, Hertfordshire.

Henry Gair was the son of Walter Burgh Gair and Elizabeth, née Jevons. In 1911 he married Mary Dorothea Moultrie, née Coleridge, of 110 Goldhurst Terrace, Hampstead, London.

He was educated privately and at Rugby School before coming up to Merton in 1902. Before the war he was on the staff of Baring Brothers in their Liverpool and London offices; his father was a Managing Director of the company.

He joined the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps in November 1916, and was gazetted to the 4th Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment, in October the following year. In April 1918 he was sent to France as part of the 1st Battalion, and on 5 May was attached to the 206th Field Company of the Royal Engineers.

On the night of 13/14 May 1918 he was in charge of a wiring party near Bretencourt Mill, Pas de Calais. In delivering a message, which he had elected to take himself rather than send someone else, he was wounded; he died on 15 May in the Officers' Hospital, No 3 Casualty Clearing Station at Gézaincourt.

The Headmaster of Rugby wrote:

Through all his career his gentleness and simple modesty were clear to all, but only those who knew him best could fully appreciate the courage and loyalty which made of life a true success and of his death an example of self-sacrifice worthy of our best.