Died: 12 March 1915
Age: 23
John Hewitt Sutton Moxly, born 27th December, 1891, was the elder son of the Reverend JHS Moxly, of 8, Stopford Road, St Helier, Jersey. Entering in 1906, he gained the King’s Gold Medal for Classics in 1909, the King’s History Prize in 1910, and in the latter year went up to Oxford with a Channel Islands Scholarship at Pembroke College. He graduated in 1914 with a Second in Classical Moderations and Litterae Humaniores.
On the outbreak of war, he offered his services and was given a commission in the 4th Battalion, The Bedfordshire Regiment. For a time, he was training at Dovercourt, but he was impatient to get to the front and his desire was realised on New Year’s Day, 1915. He saw fighting immediately and was in many tight corners. Early in March, 1915 he was shot through the heart while lifting a wire entanglement over the parapet thirty yards from the German lines.
His Commanding Officer wrote: “It was the death of a brave and devoted gentleman. I have only known him for a little over a month, but a month under these conditions is equal to a lifetime. He has always been the same, resourceful, alert, loved by officers and men. As good an officer as one could ever wish to meet. I was sitting with him in a shelter when news came of the next company losing their captain and having their parapet blown to pieces. I went up myself, and had to send for your son to superintend the work when I left.
We buried him to-day on the ramparts of Ypres.”
The above text appeared in the Victoria College Book of Remembrance published in 1920.
The link to the Channel Islands Great War Study Group website is:
http://www.greatwarci.net/honour/jersey/database/moxly-jhs-ramparts.htm
