SECOND LIEUTENANT YVO ALAN CHARTERIS
GRENADIER GUARDS
17TH OCTOBER 1915 AGE 19
BURIED: SAILLY-LABOURSE COMMUNAL CEMETERY, FRANCE
Yvo Charteris was the youngest son of the Earl and Countess of Wemyss, members of that aristocratic social group known as The Souls. He was still at school, Eton, when the war broke out, but in February 1915 persuaded his parents to let him leave and join up. He was immediately commissioned into the King's Royal Rifle Corps but transferred in April to the Grenadier Guards. The regiment went to France on 11 September 1915 and Yvo was killed five weeks later.
Yvo's eldest brother, Hugo, Lord Elcho, the heir to the earldom, was killed in April 1916. After the war, both their mother, Mary Wemyss, and their sister, Cynthia Asquith, published their records of these years. Both books give an insight into a rarely covered aspect of the war, the hopes, fears and grief of a family. The Wemyss may have been born to wealth and privilege but the mother and the sister speak for all mothers and sisters in their beautifully written books.
Yvo's inscription comes from the last verse of A.E. Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad, XXIII',
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man.
Those lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
The young soldiers who are being returned to their maker, God, are mint-perfect examples of manhood, untouched by the decay of age.
Two Sons of the Souls: Hugo and Yvo Charteris