Surname: | Tytler |
Forename(s): | William Boyd |
Rank: | Lieutenant |
Service number: | |
Regiment: | Northumberland Fusiliers 22nd (Tyneside Scottish) Bn. |
Date of death: | 1 July 1916 Aged 22 |
Place of death: | Somme |
Buried Commemorated | Unknown Thiepval Memorial to the Missing |
Background
William was born 4 January 1894 at 35 Elmfield Avenue, Aberdeen to James Millar Tytler (Draper) and Agnes m.s. Hall. His parents had married in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 29 August 1888.
1901 Census he is living in High Street, Newtonmore, with his father James and brothers Edward and George.
1911 Census William is 17 and living with his family at Granite House, Newtonmore and attending Kingussie School.
He intended to enter the teaching profession and was at the outbreak of war a student at Moray House Training College, Edinburgh.
War Record
In 1912 he entered as a private in the 6th Royal Scots (Training College Unit) and at the end of 1914 applied for and was granted a commission as a Second-Lieut. in the 4th Battalion of the Tyneside Scottish.
According to his Medal Roll he was initially a Private in the 6th Royal Scots, Service No. 1478, before service with the 22nd Bn Tyneside Scottish Northumberland Fusiliers subsequently rising to the rank of Lieutenant.
He had arrived in France around the 9 January 1916.
William died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme 1 July 1916 and is commemorated on Thiepval Memorial.
At the end of the first day of the Somme the 22nd Battalion was reported to have lost 648 men, including William, out of a strength of around 1,100. William’s body was not recovered and he is remembered on the Theipval Memorial to the missing of the Somme along side 72,171 others.
William is also commemorated on the Newtonmore War Memorial and the Kingussie and Insh Memorial in Kingussie Parish Church, on the family gravestone at Banchor Cemetery and the Jesmond Presbyterian Church Memorial – Newcastle.
His brother Rev. 2nd Lt. James Boyd Tytler also fell 16 Septemebr 1916 and is buried at Dartmoor Cemetery, Becordel-Becourt, France.



