Edward James Boys (19 September 1916 – 1 July 2002) was a leading authority on the men of the cavalry regiments of the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

who took part in the famous

Charge of the Light Brigade The Charge of the Light Brigade was a failed military action involving the British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan had intended to se ...

of 1854 during the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...

of 1854-56 between the UK and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

.Roy Dutton
''Forgotten Heroes: The Charge of the Light Brigade''
InfoDial Ltd, (2007) - Google Books pg. 180

Military service

Born into a farming family in Plumpton in

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

in 1916, in the middle of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, the son of Henry Boys (1881–1956) and Ann Margaret Boys (1882–1970). Boys' father was a

farrier A farrier is a specialist in equine hoof care, including the trimming and balancing of horses' hooves and the placing of shoes on their hooves, if necessary. A farrier combines some blacksmith's skills (fabricating, adapting, and adjus ...

in the

Royal Field Artillery The Royal Field Artillery (RFA) of the British Army provided close artillery support for the infantry. It came into being when created as a distinct arm of the Royal Regiment of Artillery on 1 July 1899, serving alongside the other two arms of t ...

. 'Jim' Boys left school aged 14, and in 1937 he enlisted in the 2nd Battalion,

Coldstream Guards The Coldstream Guards is the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army. As part of the Household Division, one of its principal roles is the protection of the monarchy; due to this, it often participates in state ceremonia ...

and transferred to the 3rd Battalion when that Battalion was posted overseas. From 1937 to 1939 he served in Egypt and Palestine. He served in Egypt during the early stages of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, and in

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...

he met Greek-born Nitza Lemonia Asnay; he was captured at

Tobruk Tobruk or Tobruck (; grc, Ἀντίπυργος, ''Antipyrgos''; la, Antipyrgus; it, Tobruch; ar, طبرق, Tubruq ''Ṭubruq''; also transliterated as ''Tobruch'' and ''Tubruk'') is a port city on Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast, near th ...

in 1941 and spent the rest of the war in prisoner of war camps in Italy and Germany. In 1946 he married Nitza Asnay (1920-2002).Biography of Edward James Boys on the E.J. Boys Archive website
/ref>

Medal researcher

On his return to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

Boys became a Prison Officer at

HM Prison Wandsworth HM Prison Wandsworth is a Category B men's prison at Wandsworth in the London Borough of Wandsworth, South West London, England. It is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service and is one of the largest prisons in the UK. History The prison w ...

where he was in charge of a workshop manned by the prisoners which produced equipment for the armed services. He became interested in collecting medals during the 1950s, and he became an early member of the Orders and Medals Research Society. Boys took early retirement from the Prison Service in 1968, and then worked for a number of years for the Ministry of Defence, inspecting the manufacture of military equipment. Eventually his interest in medals lead him to begin collecting material concerning the men of the Light Brigade who had taken part in the famous

in 1854. Boys was tireless in the pursuit of information, and wherever possible he traced the life of every man of the Light Brigade from his birth through to his death, and in a number of cases traced their relatives to the present day to gain as much information as possible. The lives of many of these men are only recorded in the accounts he created. For more than forty years Boys gathered information from a huge range of sources, including official records from the

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

India Office The India Office was a British government department established in London in 1858 to oversee the administration, through a Viceroy and other officials, of the Provinces of India. These territories comprised most of the modern-day nations of I ...

, the

Public Record Office The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was m ...

, contemporary newspapers, census returns, church records, Registries of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and many local and national libraries. He corresponded with descendants and wider-family members, modern-day regiments, and other organisations and individuals throughout the world, including the noted

historian

Canon William Lummis Canon William Murrell Lummis MC (4 June 1886 – 2 November 1985) was a British military historian most noted for the research he conducted on the Victoria Cross, the Charge of the Light Brigade, and Rorke's Drift.Roy Dutton''Forgotten Hero ...

, seeking and exchanging information, photographs and transcripts of letters and other published and unpublished documents. As a result of his research, Jim Boys accumulated a substantial collection of contemporary material – photographs, paintings and other images, letters and autobiographies (including accounts of the Charge never previously published). To these he added modern photographs of medals, memorials and gravestones, most of which he took himself. He also owned a private collection of Crimean War medals awarded to 'Chargers'. The result is widely regarded among many historians as being the most complete and authoritative record of the lives of men of the Light Brigade, and their families, in existence. He lived for many years in

Wandsworth Wandsworth Town () is a district of south London, within the London Borough of Wandsworth southwest of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan The London Plan is the statutory spatial development strategy for the Gre ...

with his wife Nitza Asnay Boys and his son Philip. An on-line archive of the researches of E J Boys is currently being created.''The Lives of the Light Brigade: The E J Boys Archive''
/ref> Edward James Boys died in London in 2002.

References

* ''In Search of the Light Brigade: A Biographical Dictionary of the Members of the Five Original Regiments of the Light Brigade from Jan 1,1854 to Mar 31,1856'' by Lawrence W. Crider Published by Lawrence Crider (2004) *''Forgotten Heroes: The Charge of the Light Brigade'' by Roy Dutton Published by Infodial Ltd (2007)

External links

The E J Boys Archive
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070530121055/http://www.regiments.org/wars/19thcent/53crimea.htm E J Boys on the Crimean War section of Regiments.Org {{DEFAULTSORT:Boys, Edward James Crimean War 1916 births 2002 deaths Coldstream Guards soldiers British Army personnel of World War II British World War II prisoners of war British military historians World War II prisoners of war held by Italy World War II prisoners of war held by Germany People from Plumpton, East Sussex