22 Facts About Edward Brittain

Edward Brittain was educated at Uppingham School, where he made two close friends, Roland Leighton and Victor Richardson.

Edward Brittain was a good student, though seldom a prizewinner, at Uppingham and served in the Officers' Training Corps.

Edward Brittain left school in July 1914, just before the First World War broke out.

Edward Brittain had been admitted to New College, Oxford, but after the outbreak of hostilities he joined the British Army and was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant into the Sherwood Foresters on 19 November 1914.

Edward Brittain remained in England for the first year and a half of the war; he was held back from several transfers to the front by his colonel who was not impressed by Edward's supercilious attitude.

Leighton, who had been serving on the Western Front, died of wounds in December 1915, and soon afterwards, in early 1916, Edward Brittain was posted to the Western Front.

Edward Brittain was wounded in the left arm and the right thigh in the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916.

Edward Brittain was awarded the Military Cross for his service on the Somme.

Edward Brittain was severely wounded, but continued to lead his men with great bravery and coolness until a second wound disabled him.

Edward Brittain remained in England, recuperating and then on light duty, until 30 June 1917.

Edward Brittain's letters became increasingly critical of the conduct of the war.

Vera Edward Brittain was posted to a British hospital in northern France in August 1917, but the siblings never managed to see each other in France.

Edward Brittain was made a temporary captain in August 1917 and was sent to the Italian Front with the 11th Sherwood Foresters in November 1917.

Edward Brittain saw his family for the last time on leave in January 1918.

On 15 June 1918 on the Asiago Plateau, Captain Edward Brittain was shot in the head and killed during an early morning counter-attack against an Austrian offensive, part of the Battle of the Piave River.

In June 1918, army censors had read a letter from Edward Brittain that indicated he had had homosexual relations with men in his company.

Edward Brittain's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Hudson, was notified that Brittain would be court-martialled when he came out of the line.

Edward Brittain's commanding officer believed that Brittain put himself in harm's way to avoid a court martial and the shame that this would bring upon his family.

Edward Brittain was initially reluctant to believe that her brother had deliberately exposed himself to danger but eventually came around to his colonel's interpretation of events and fictionalised them in her novel Honourable Estate.

Edward Brittain is buried in Granezza British Cemetery on the Asiago Plateau in Italy.

In September 1921 Vera Edward Brittain visited the cemetery with Winifred Holtby, and her will requested that her ashes be scattered on his grave; "for nearly 50 years much of my heart has been in that Italian village cemetery".

Edward Brittain is commemorated along with Victor Richardson and Roland Leighton on the war memorial at St Barnabas Church, Hove; this was the church attended by the Richardson family.