2nd Lt Maurice Lea. 7th Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment. Killed in Action on 18th August 1916. Remembered on the Thiepval Memorial.
This article appeared in the Northampton Mercury on 1st September 1916:
"Mr. and Mrs. H. Lea, Sunnyland, Dallington,have received many letters of sympathy for the death of thier son, Lieut. Maurice B. Tea. Northamptonshire Regiment, who was killed in action on August 18.
Lieutenant-Colonel E. E. Mobbs, Lieutenant Lea's Commanding Officer, is at present too ill to write personally, but his brother, Mr. A. Noel Mobbs, who has seen him in the Swedish Hospital, London, has written on his behalf.
Lieutenant-Colonel Mobbs was hit at the commencement of the attack,and cannot actually say what happened to Lieutenant Lea, but wounded men who were taken into hospital at Rouen while Colonel Mobbs was there, told him that Lieutenant Lea was killed just as he and his men reached the German trenches, which they have held ever since.
Mr. Noel Mobbs whites: I need not tell you how sorry my brother is at the loss of many good officers and men in carrying out an attack for which they were specially selected by the General, and the result of which was held as an important advance."
Captain H. Grierson, Northamptonshire Regiment, has written from Guy's Hospital expressing heartfelt sympathy. He says: "I did not have the honour of being with the Company during the attack.
"I was hit an hour or two beforehand, but I left them in the knowledge that they would be gallantly led by their officers,whom your boy was one. "Although I had not been with him very long,1 liked him immensely. He was always such a perfect gentleman, and did his work well and willingly without making any fuss about it. I can safely he did not know the meaning of the word fear. He was in every way a very gallant officer, and his men were devoted to him.”
His sergeant witnessed his death and noted the location where he fell but his body was never recovered due to subsequent shelling of the area between the village of Guillemont and Trones Wood.