LIEUTENANT GILBERT WALTER LYTTELTON TALBOT
RIFLE BRIGADE
30TH JULY 1915 AGE 23
BURIED: SANCTUARY WOOD CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
Lieutenant Talbot's inscription was chosen by his father, Edward Talbot, Bishop of Winchester. The first line comes from Revelation 1 verse 18:
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen.
The second line comes from Psalm 36 verse 9:
In Thy light shall we see light.
Talbot was killed in action leading his platoon across No-man's-land at 2.45 in the afternoon, in other words in broad daylight, in an attempt to recapture Hooge Crater. The crater had been captured earlier that morning by the Germans using liquid-fire, flame throwers, for the first time. There is a vivid description of Talbot's life and death in this blog post.
Toc-H, Talbot House, the world-wide Christian movement designed to maintain the brotherhood of the trenches into the post-war world, was so named in Gilbert's honour at his brother Neville Talbot's request. The symbol of the movement is a bronze lamp of the type used in the Roman catacombs, each Toc-H branch owns one. The inscription round the top reads: In lumine tuo videbimus lumen