Colin Blythe - Personality and Death

Personality and Death

Regarded as a sensitive and artistic person, and a talented violinist, Blythe suffered from epilepsy yet enlisted as a soldier in the British Army when the war broke out in 1914. He soon announced he would be playing no more first-class cricket. Blythe joined the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Sergeant Blythe was serving with the 12th (S) Battalion when he was killed by random shell-fire on the railway between Pimmern and Forest Hall near Passchendaele on 8 November 1917. Blythe is buried in the Oxford Road CWGC Cemetery in Belgium.

In 2009, when the England cricket team visited the Flanders war graves, a "stone cricket ball was laid at the grave of England and Kent bowler Colin Blythe, who died at Passchendaele." "It was a deeply moving and humbling experience," said captain Andrew Strauss.