Lives of the First World War

2011 - 2015

The Queen has spoken for the first time of her family's painful search for the missing body of her heroic uncle who was killed in the First World War. Remains of Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother's brother, have never been recovered since he died at the Battle of Loos in northern France in 1915. The Queen spoke of detective work to track down his suspected mass grave in 2011 as she met Ministry of Defence officials who help families find the bodies of their loved ones. Fergus, 26, a Captain in the Black Watch, died leading an attack on the German lines at the heavily fortified Hohenzollern Redoubt. His leg was blown off by a barrage of German artillery and bullets then struck him in the chest and shoulder. His death, followed by their inability to find out where his remains lay, hit the Queen Mother and her family hard. In 2011 Captain Bowes-Lyon’s grandson, James Voicey-Cecil, 59, with the help of his second cousin, the Prince of Wales, and historian Christopher Bailey, helped trace where he was buried in a mass grave in a quarry. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission accepted the evidence they put forward and agreed to erect a headstone carrying his name and the words “Buried near this spot”.

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