Cyril Ashley Elkins was born in Boxmoor, Hertfordshire on Wednesday, 27th February 1895 and baptised in St John’s church in the village two months later on Sunday, 21st April. He was the only son born to Walter Elkins and his second wife Helen Eliza Gurney. Cyril had an older half brother Bertie Stephen who was his father’s son from his first marriage to Charlotte Jane Newans who had died in 1892.

In 1901 Cyril lived with his family in St John’s Road in Boxmoor and his father Walter worked as a ‘Plumber’. Cyril started at Boxmoor JMI School in 1901 and achieved two of his ‘Standards’ by the time he left in March 1908 "To help his mother in a grocer’s shop", one of at least six grocers on St John’s Road at that time.

By 1911 when he was sixteen-years-old, Cyril had found new employment and worked as a ‘Servant’ in nearby Heath Brow School on Heath Lane. This was a small private school which occupied a house called ‘Hillside’, previously a private residence, which stood opposite the Hemel Hempstead School playing fields today.

Cyril enlisted to fight under the ‘Derby Scheme’ which was launched in the autumn of 1915 by the Earl of Derby, who was Kitchener's new Director General of Recruiting. The scheme was intended to determine whether British manpower goals could be met by volunteers or if conscription was necessary. 

Each eligible man aged eighteen to forty-one who was not in a "starred" (essential) occupation had to make a public declaration. When the scheme was announced there was a surge in recruiting because many men volunteered without waiting to be "fetched". By the end of December over 318,000 fit single men had been identified but some 121,000 of these men publicly refused to enlist which was a factor leading to the introduction of conscription early in 1916.

Cyril attested at Hemel Hempstead in December 1915 and enlisted with the Northamptonshire Regiment and was posted to the 6th Battalion. It is not clear when Cyril went to France, but it seems likely that he would have embarked after approximately six months basic training. This would put his arrival with the Battalion at around May or June of 1916 and the Battalion War diary mentions two drafts of men joining on the 26th May so it is possible that these drafts included Cyril. If so, he was soon in action on the Somme as the 6th Battalion fought in the Battles of Albert, Bazentin, Delville Wood, Thiepval Ridge, Ancre Heights and in the final attack at the Somme in the Battle of Ancre.

It appears that Cyril was wounded in fighting between the 6th and 10th November on the Mouquet Road between Thiepval and Pozieres as the Battalion War Diary records a number of casualties on each of those days. What is known is that Cyril would have been taken to a nearby Dressing Station for initial treatment before evacuating to No.9 Casualty Clearing Station at Contay approximately twelve miles to the west.

It was here that Cyril died from his wounds on Sunday, 12th November 1916

A year after his death his parents posted an "In Memoriam" notice in the Hemel Gazette which included a moving verse describing their forlorn grief at the loss of their son.

He was commemorated on a memorial plaque in St John’s Church in Boxmoor.

Cyril is Remembered with Honour in Contay British Cemetery, Contay, Somme, France where he is interred in Grave IV. D. 6.

He was 21 years old when he died.

Cyril was entitled to the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.