Horace Lefevre Phillips was born at Uppingham on 6 April 1891. He was the son of Abel and Sarah Phillips who lived in the High Street. Before the war Horace was a market gardener. He joined up in August 1914 enlisting in the 8th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment, serving with the machine gun section. He went out to France in July 1915, and was killed the following year in the attack on Bazentin Le Petit Wood, during the Battle of the Somme. A fellow soldier wrote: "Poor old Horace! If there's anyone I miss it's Horace, latterly he was more or less like a father to several of us, he was the boss of our clique. A great big, red-faced giant amongst us. He presided at out feeds in billets, and was a general favourite. In the trenches last winter, he was the life and soul of our gun team, and he was about the only one who wasn't always grousing about the mud and the cold." The Sergeant of the team wrote: "In my team at the time of the attack was a big chap named Phillips of Uppingham, one of the best, most generous, most gentlemanly, straightforward fellows in the world. While we were waiting in a wood [Mametz Wood], just before going over the top, a big shell came over and badly wounded Phillips and others. I was about a yard away at the time. He died soon after on the way to the dressing station. I lost a big chum in him." His Commanding Officer said of Horace: "He was one of my best men and steady as a rock." Horace has no known grave and is remembered on Pier 3A of the Thiepval Memorial, alongside more than fifty other men from Rutland, and also on the war memorial in Uppingham. He was 25 years old.

See where all our Rutland soldiers died during the Battle of the Somme on our interactive map.