Lt. Edward Horner

Edward was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford before being called to the bar and beginning a pupilage as a barrister; he joined the British Army at the outbreak of the First World War and was killed at the Battle of Cambrai in France in 1917.

Biography

Edward William Horner (born 3 May 1888) was the son of Sir John Horner, KCVO, of Mells Manor, and his wife Frances (née Graham). The family was reputed to be descendants of "Little Jack Horner", the subject of an 18th-century nursery rhyme. Edward was the last direct male heir of the Horner family, his only brother (Mark) having died of scarlet fever before the war. Sir John was a London barrister and later commissioner of woods, for which he was knighted in 1908. Frances was a prominent member of the Souls social group, whom she regularly hosted at Mells. Edward was the eldest of their four children. He was educated at Summer Fields School near Oxford, then at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Officers' Training Corps. At Oxford, he became part of the social network known as the Coterie. The group was made up largely of heirs to aristocratic families and included Raymond Asquith, Horner's future brother-in-law. Many of them were frequent visitors to Mells Manor at the beginning of the 20th century and Horner was unofficially engaged to another member, Lady Diana Manners. Horner struggled academically, graduating from Oxford with only a third-class degree, much to the disappointment of his parents and particularly his mother, who concentrated all her ambitions on Edward after Mark's premature death. Struggling for career options, Edward pursued his parents' ambition for him to become a barrister. He was called to the bar, and began a pupillage in 1914 in the chambers of Hugh Fraser under the ultimate guidance of F. E. Smith, one of the most distinguished barristers of the day.

Like many contemporary men, especially those from aristocratic backgrounds, Horner felt a keen sense of patriotism fostered by his private education and by tales from imperial campaigns around the turn of the 20th century, especially the Second Boer War (1899–1902). On 19 August 1914, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the North Somerset Yeomanry, a part-time Territorial Force unit with no obligation to serve abroad. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, his regiment was ordered to Hampshire for training. Unlike the men under his command, among them farmers who were reluctant to leave their land, Horner was keen to join the fighting in France. As an influential aristocratic family, the Horners were able to secure him a transfer first to the Royal Horse Guards and then, in October 1914, to the 18th (Queen Mary's Own) Hussars. The 18th Hussars were stationed at Tidworth Camp in Wiltshire under the 11th Reserve Cavalry for training, after which they were deployed to the Western Front in early 1915.

Horner arrived first at Rouen, well behind the front, and then in February 1915 was ordered forward to Hazebrouck on the Belgian border. In May 1915, he was assigned to escort a working party to dig trenches on the north side of the Yser Canal. During the march, he was wounded in the stomach by shrapnel from an artillery shell. Hospitalised at the No. 7 General Hospital at Boulogne in France, he had a kidney removed, and at one point his condition was so grave that his parents were given special permission to visit him. They were accompanied by his fiancée (Lady Manners) and a private doctor and nurse. He left the hospital on 1 June and was allowed to return to Mells to recuperate for the summer of 1915. Eager to return to the front, Horner went before a medical board in December 1915 but was told that his missing kidney rendered him ineligible for front-line duties. He was sent again to Tidworth to await orders, which arrived in January 1916, instructing him to sail for Egypt. He was promoted to temporary lieutenant in November 1916.

He was first assigned a staff post in Egypt but was again able to transfer to a fighting role in France in February 1917. In October that year, the family's second home at Mells Park was destroyed by fire; Horner was given compassionate leave in early November and returned to the village to visit his parents. Returning to France, he was given command of a troop (16 soldiers and horses). The 18th Hussars were part of the Battle of Cambrai, where they were holding the village of Noyelles, south-east of Cambrai itself. He was hit by sniper fire on 21 November 1917 and evacuated to No. 48 Casualty Clearing Station near Ytres but died that evening. He is buried in Rocquigny-Equancourt Road British Cemetery, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The headstone for his grave in France contains the epitaph "Small time, but in that small most greatly lived this star of England", from Shakespeare's Henry V.

Equestrian statue of Edward Horner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrian_statue_of_Edward_Horner