Born in Filey to John Grant and Isabella Birch, who later to Bedfont Lodge, Middlesex.  Eric had been educated at Rugby and Wyke College, Kent where he gained an Agricultural Diploma, which he was to use to take up a government appointment in the Sudan, had the war not broken out.  After his parents had left Filey he moved to Brighouse where in August 1914 he played a key part in raising the local  territorial battalion, the ‘Brighouse chums’ (otherwise known as the 4^th Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regt.).  It was in this battalion that he trained and received his commission but in 1915 was removed and attached to the rapidly expanding Machine Gun Corps where he stayed until the conclusion of the 1916 Somme campaign.  He was awarded the Military cross for the action that caused his death; his company was ordered to a section of a German trench and even though he was wounded he led them to do this.  In addition, a total of ninety prisoners were captured and brought back to British lines, but shortly afterwards Birch collapsed and was taken to Doullens Military Hospital, where he subsequently died and was laid to rest in a nearby cemetery.