Biography:
Grenville Fortescue was born in London on 15 March 1887, the only son of Captain the Hon. Arthur Grenville Fortescue, formerly of the Coldstream Guards, and Lilla Gertrude Fortescue, daughter of Frederick Fane (Commoner 1838).
He came to Winchester College from Mr Locke's School at Winchfield in September 1900 and was in G House, Sergeant's. Grenville was a rower and competed in a number of house and school competitions.
After leaving school in the summer of 1904, he passed through Sandhurst and was gazetted in 1906 to 4th Battalion, Rifle Brigade. He retired from the Army in 1910 and spent two years in Canada. On 27 November 1912 he married Adelaide Jephson of Christchurch, Hampshire and at his death left two children, a son Arthur Henry Grenville Fortescue (D 1927-1932) and a daughter. His son came to Winchester as a War Memorial Exhibitioner, assisted by the fund set up to provide an education for the sons of Wykehamists killed in the war. In 1914 Grenville Fortescue became a member of Lloyds.
On the outbreak of war Grenville immediately rejoined his old battalion, and subsequently transferred to 11th Battalion, a New Army formation. He was gazetted as a Captain in November 1914, and with his battalion arrived in France in July 1915.
He was killed in action at Laventie, at the age of twenty-eight, on 4 September 1915, during the battalion’s working-up period. According to the regimental history, that night the battalion conducted a patrol into No Man’s Land and it may be that Fortescue was killed in this operation. He rests in grave D.14 of the Rue-du-Bacquerot (13th London) Graveyard, Laventie.