Elkington deployed to France at the start of the First World War with his unit and saw action at the 26 August Battle of Le Cateau during the Great Retreat from Mons.

Elkington applied to rejoin the army as a private but was refused and instead travelled to Paris to join the French Foreign Legion.

In late Spring 1915 he fought at the Second Battle of Artois and received the Croix de Guerre for bravery in rescuing a detachment of his unit.

He spent the next 10 months in hospital but received a palm to his Croix de Guerre and was awarded the Médaille Militaire on the orders of General Joseph Joffre.

After his son was killed in the Second World War Elkington commissioned a stained glass window in the local church.

He was the son of Irish-born British Army officer John Henry Ford Elkington (1830–1889), who rose to the rank of lieutenant-general and was later Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey.

[3][1] He served in the regiment's 1st battalion, alongside another former Elizabeth College student, the future air commodore Henry Le Marchant Brock.

[5] He volunteered to serve in the West African Frontier Force and was deployed to Nigeria between 11 March 1899 and 23 May 1900 when he was invalided home with malaria.

[10][11] Elkington and the Dublins' commander Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Mainwaring, found the Grand Place of the town filled with British stragglers, separated from their units and with very few officers.

They had expected to find trains in the town to carry them onwards but these were not present; the men believed they were surrounded by the advancing German forces.

[13] Despite being outranked he told Elkington and Mainwaring to assemble their men and continue the retreat, offering to cover them with his cavalry squadron.

He was unsuccessful in inspiring them until, having looted a toy shop, he paraded round the square with his trumpeter playing The British Grenadiers and It's a Long Way to Tipperary on a drum and tin whistle.

[14] One of Elkington's officers was the future field marshal Bernard Montgomery, who recalled the unit marching in the gap between the forward German cavalry screen and their following infantry.

[10][18] The court records were lost but it is known that Elkington was originally charged with cowardice in the face of the enemy, which was punishable by the death penalty.

Elkington was convicted of the lesser charge of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman on grounds of a mental breakdown suffered at a time of great stress.

There he came across Dr David Wheeler, an American surgeon with the French Red Cross who had also enlisted in the legion, who mistook Elkington for a tramp.

[20]: 125 At Artois (also called the Battle of Vimy Ridge) Elkington rallied a section of his unit recovering from a failed attack and led them to rescue a detachment trapped in front of them by French shellfire.

[2] A week later, at Souchez, Elkington prevented his platoon from assaulting, as ordered, until he had destroyed a German machine gun position that threatened their attack.

He routed a detachment of German troops by throwing grenades but was hit by a hidden machine gun, several bullets smashing his right leg.

Wheeler was hit in the calf by the same burst of fire but tended to Elkington, bandaging the leg and giving him a shot of morphine.

[20]: 126  After bandaging his own wound Wheeler fainted on Elkington and the two men lay in a rain-filled trench, some 100 yards (91 m) from the German position, for more than 13 hours until rescued by a passing patrol.

[1] Wheeler also recovered and remained with the legion until 1917 when he joined the newly arrived American forces; he died four months before the end of the war.

Orpen told Elkington's wife: "I do not think I have ever painted a man I admired so much as the Colonel" and exhibited the work at the Royal Academy in London in 1917.

[24] Elkington's youngest son served with the 10th battalion of the Rifle Brigade during the Second World War and was killed in action near Bou Arada, Tunisia on 19 January 1943.

[21][1] The window, with additional plaques honouring Elkington and his son-in-law Sir Richard de Bacquencourt des Voeux (who was killed while commanding the 156th Parachute Battalion at the Battle of Arnhem on 20 September 1944), was unveiled in May 1946 by Montgomery.