Tragic story of brothers in arms mown down within weeks of each other in WW1 revealed in cottage find

Brothers Douglas and Albert Stephen were officers in crack British regiments, but died within weeks of being sent to France in August 1914.

The two young men weren’t forgotten –relatives commissioned renowned watercolourist Cecil Cutler to paint striking three-quarter length portraits.

Until recently they hung in the cottage at Boltby on the edge of the North York Moors along with their medals. Discovered during a house clearance they are going up for auction at The Gallery Saleroom, Scarborough, today (Friday August 11).

Graham Paddison, a militaria specialist with David Duggleby, said the career professional soldiers had fought their way through the Boer War in South Africa and served in other hotspots around the globe. He said: “They must have thought that they had seen it all but of course nobody foresaw what was going to happen, particularly in those first desperate months of the conflict.”

Captain Douglas Stephen, 37, was the first to be killed Commander of No. 3 Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, which was sent to France just nine days after the declaration of war, they arrived at Le Havre on August 14.

He didn’t survive a month. Hit in both legs by machinegun fire during the Battle of the Marne on September 8, he died of his wounds in hospital two days later, one of 41 men his company lost in the fighting on that one day.

Younger brother, 35-year-old Captain Albert Stephen, was a Boer War hero, awarded the Distinguished Service Order in South Africa, and was the Adjutant of the 1st Battalion of the Scots Guards, which arrived in Le Havre on the same day as the Grenadiers.

But he survived just 11 weeks, killed on October 31, midway through the First Battle of Ypres.

Graham said descendants of the family had decided that the time had come to let the items go to a collection. The medal sets are almost identical, but Albert’s Boer War DSO , an award given to officers for meritorious conduct in wartime, means his is predicted to go for £2,000 to £3,000. Douglas’s set is expected to go for £350-£500.