[1][2] After working for the firm Dumas & Wylie, Shears joined the army in August 1914 and was commissioned with the 13th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade.
He was wounded during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and the following year was given a regular commission with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
After the Fusiliers were disbanded in 1922, he served with the Border Regiment in Britain, India, China, Malta and the Sudan until 1935.
He was descended from the Shears family of coppersmiths and the Huguenot Henry Dumas (1794−1843), who settled in England in the 1820s.
[2] National Portrait Gallery, photograph of Philip Shears by Walter Stoneman, 1943.