SECOND LIEUTENANT THOMAS FRANCIS HALFORD FREMANTLE
OXFORDSHIRE AND BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY
17TH OCTOBER 1915 AGE 18
BURIED: ETAPLES MILITARY CEMETERY, FRANCE
Mr Valiant-for-Truth is a character in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress who, when he knew his death to be imminent, called his friends together and told them:
"I am going to my Father's; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage; and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who will now be my rewarder."
Thomas Fremantle's mother, Lady Cottesloe, chose his inscription. As you can see, it's not an exact quotation from Pilgrim's Progress but it is close enough for the association to be made. I wonder whether there is a hidden message here. Thomas Fremantle was his father's eldest son and the heir to the title, Lord Cottesloe. Therefore in a very real sense there would be someone to succeed him in this position after his death - his younger brother, John, who did indeed become the 4th Lord Cottesloe on the death of his father in 1956.
Fremantle was a King's Scholar at Eton when he insisted on leaving school in September 1914, whilst he was still only 17, to take a commission in the 5th Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. He went with the battalion to France in May 1915. He was now 18 but without his parents' signed permission he would not have been able to go. Four months later, on 25 September, he was wounded in the head and back by shrapnel when a shell burst over his trench. Evacuated to a base hospital near Boulogne, where his parents were able to visit him, he died three weeks later.
There is more information about Thomas Fremantle on the Swanborne History site