Killed in action aged 21
Buried in the Hermies Hill War Cemetery Plot 1 H 23
Henry Lancaster Nevill was the only son of Robert Neville Dundas, a lawyer, and his wife Cecil Mary Lancaster of Slateford, Midlothian.
In 1921, his father wrote and published a memoir of him “Henry Dundas, Scots Guards. A Memoir” William Blackwood & sons, Edinburgh. Published on the web.
“From infancy Henry was a stirring child, and showed an early disposition to take charge in his nursery. Thus at the age of eighteen months he would reprove an indolent nurse in the morning with the exhortation, "Tick-a-tick, Nannie. Up, up." On the other hand, he showed his loyalty to her when, on the arrival a very few months later of the beloved nurse who was to be the friend of all his life, he greeted her with the somewhat unpromising welcome of, "Beat new Nannie!" Most children, if parents are to be believed, have prodigious memories at an early age, so it is hardly worth recording that the South African War having now started he could sing "Rule Britannia" and the "Absent-minded Beggar" at the age of two.
“From an early age he had a somewhat ribald vein of humour that found unholy delight in shocking people, and the fame of his retort to the clergyman at a party in Kirkcudbrightshire, to which his mother took him at the age of four, has found its way outside the family circle. "How old are you, little man?" demanded the kindly cleric. To which in broad Scotch came the unexpected reply, "I'm sixty-five and drunk every night”.
From 1906 until 1910, he was educated at Horris Hill and having passed eleventh into College in the College Examination of 1910, went on to Eton and in the Lent Term of 1915 became Captain of the Rugby Fifteen and won the Loder Declamation Prize for which Lord Curzon was the judge, delivering a most interesting address on “Oratory”. In the summer of the same year, he became Captain of the Oppidans and won a history Scholarship at Christ Church. He finished his time at Eton by securing the first Oppidan Prize in an examination for those at the top of the school.
Leaving school, he applied for a commission in the Scots Guards, from September 1915 being billeted at Wellington Barracks and after further training went to France in May 1916. He was gazetted as a Lieutenant on 19 July 1916.
He was killed on 27 September 1918 and is buried in the Hermies Hill War Cemetery Plot 1 H 23 and his name is on the Slateford & Longstone War Memorial (Edinburgh).