Frederick William Durham was the son of C H Durham and his wife of 22 New Street, Oakham, and was born at Chelsea in London on 8 April 1892. Before the war he was a clerk in the Midland Railway Engineers' Office at Melton Mowbray. He joined up on 11 January 1915, serving with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment and was in Ireland at the time of the Uprising. He was sent to the Western Front on 25 February 1917, and took part in the Somme fighting of that period and in the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) in August. The fighting was some of the worst the Leicestershires had experienced. On 26 September the battalion attacked Hill 37 near Ypres advancing steadily under a creeping barrage. According to George Phillips in Rutland and the Great War: "The bombardment was terrible, over 3,000 guns firing continuously day and night. The battle was won, the regiment taking all its objectives, but at a very heavy loss." The battalion war diary records four officers and 61 men were killed, five officers, including the Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Wood, and 184 men were wounded and 25 men were missing. Frederick survived but four days later on 30 September he was among 25 casualties killed or wounded when the remains of the battalion was shelled as it marched out of the line. He does not have a known grave and is remembered on Tyne Cot Memorial near Ypres, Panel 50, and on Oakham's war memorial.