Observer-Lieutenant, Royal Naval Air Service
Born: November 4th 1897
Died: August 12th 1918
Age at Death: 20
Died of Wounds, France, August 12th 1918
A donation to this memorial statue has been made in honour of this soldier by Ken Wilson-Wheeler (Le. 1954-59).
“Duty nobly done, thou good and faithful servant. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
Brightonian XV April, 1916
Valete
R.E. Horton - Entered Junior House, January, 1909. School House, September 1911. House Prefect, September, 1914. Prefect, June, 1915. Second XI. Cricket, 1915. Lance-Corporal in the O.T.C. Form, Army Class (Senior).
Robert Edmund Horton
Robert Edmund Horton was born in France on 4 November 1897. He was one of two children of Charles Horton and his wife Edith (née Salmon). There is very little trace of the family in the public records and it may be that the family lived in France throughout Horton’s childhood. The one record that does survive is, very unusually for the period, a petition for divorce on grounds of adultery filed by Horton’s mother Edith in 1914 against her husband. While a pupil at the College Horton played for the cricket 2nd XI as well as being a school prefect and serving as a Lance-Corporal in the OTC.
After leaving the College, Horton received a commission in the RFC. In 1918 he was attached to the 243rd Squadron RAF, based in Cherbourg, where he acted as an observer in Wight seaplanes being flown for maritime observation over the Channel. On 13 August 1918 he was killed instantly in an air accident in which his pilot, Lieutenant Mossop, also sustained fatal injuries.
Horton’s grave is in Tourlaville Communal Cemetery, Manche, France
Source: LEST WE FORGET PROJECT, Brighton College 2014/15