John Norman Pickering-Clarke was an Oakham School pupil between 1907 and 1911, the son of H Pickering-Clarke and his wife from Clarendon Park Road in Leicester. The photograph shows him in the school cricket First XI in 1910. He enlisted in the Highland Light Infantry but won a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant and transferred to the 7th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment. He arrived in France in February 1916 and he was killed in action five months later during the Battle of the Somme in heavy fighting around Bazentin-Le-Petit Wood on 14 July. He was 21 years old. John has no known grave and so his name is remembered on Pier 2C of the Thiepval Memorial in France, as well as on the war memorial in Oakham School chapel.

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