On Wednesday, 18 March 2026, at 12:30 hours, a ceremony was held at the British Tyne Cot Cemetery in Passchendaele. Captain John Russell Pound was given a new gravestone bearing his name, thanks to research that proved he was indeed buried there. 

Captain John Russell Pound was born in Edmonton, Middlesex, on 7 June 1887. He was the eldest of six children born to Sir John Lulham Pound and his wife Lady Julia. His grandfather Sir John Pound, the owner of luggage manufacturer and retailer John Pound & Co, had served as the Lord Mayor of London between 1904 and 1905 and had become the 1^st Baronet Pound, of Stanmore, Middlesex, a title that Captain Pound would have inherited had he not been killed during the First World War.

John Russell Pound was educated at the Merchant Taylor's School in London and St John's College Oxford where he graduated with First Class Honours in Mathematics and took a masters degree. He was a keen athlete, and played rugby for his school team, was captain of his college team and played for the Oxford University and for the Old Merchant Taylors. In 1909 John became an Assistant Master at Shrewsbury School. He later had an interval year teaching at Christ Church College in Kanpur, India, before becoming the Housemaster of School House at Shrewsbury School. On 31 March 1914 he married Elsie Irene Pendlebury in the Shrewsbury School Chapel. 

Captain Pound took a keen interest in the Officer Training Corps at Shrewbury School in which he was a captain. In 1910 he was gazetted on the Unattached List in the Territorial Force. Upon the outbreak of the First World War he applied for a Commission and in August 1914 was made a captain in 3^rd Battalion The King's Shropshire Light Infantry and was attached to 2^nd Battalion for active service on the Western Front.

On 25 April 1915, two companies of 2^nd Battalion The King's Shropshire Light Infantry, X Company under Captain Pound, and Z Company,  were sent to the extreme apex of the salient near Broodseinde to retake Trench 25 which had been lost by 2^nd Battalion The East Surrey Regiment the day before. When they reached the sunken road half a mile beyond Zonnebeke, it was decided to attack from there. Two platoons of Z Company attacked but were not successful. X Company then made another attempt to take the trench but was also not successful. Following the attacks, X and Z Companies took over the trenches adjoining the lost trench and it was in that location on 27 April 1915 that Captain Pound was shot through the head by a sniper and died without regaining consciousness. He was 27 years old. Later that day another unsuccessful attempt to take Trench 25 was made by the battalion.

Captain Pound was the second of the six siblings to lose his life in the Great War. His younger brother, Lieutenant Murray Stuart Pound who was attached to 1^st Battalion The Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment), was wounded near Poelcapelle on 21 October 1914 and died in St Guy's Hospital London. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.

After the war the remains of Captain John Russell Pound were recovered and buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery as an unknown captain of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry. As he was missing, Captain Pound was commemorated on the Menin Gate. However, new research had led to the identification of his grave and the headstone over the grave has now been changed to reflect this. The grave was rededicated on 18 March 2026.





























































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