CAPTAIN ROBERT CONINGSBY WILMOT
SHERWOOD FORESTERS NOTTS AND DERBY REGIMENT
29TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 31
BURIED: RUISSEAU FARM CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
For all that these words are popularly associated with the Great War, they are not a particularly popular headstone inscription. However, Mrs Katharine Wilmot used them on the graves of all three of her sons who died in the war: Thomas Norbury Wilmot MC, who died on 25 August 1916 of wounds received at Thiepval the previous day; Henry Cecil Wilmot, who, died on 23 July 1917 from illness contracted on active service, and Robert Coningsby Wilmot, who was killed in action on 29 October 1917.
The Revd Francis Wilmot, and Katharine his wife, had eleven children: seven daughters and five sons. The two eldest daughters, Winifred and Mary, died in their late twenties before the war, by which time Katharine herself was a widow. Two of the sons went to Canada: Henry in 1911 and Thomas in 1914. Thomas returned to fight in October 1914, Henry in April 1916. Robert, a solicitor in London, joined up in August 1914. Dangerously wounded in August 1915, he didn't return to the front until April 1916. Thomas was killed four months later; Henry, invalided home in April 1917, died in July, and Robert was killed in action three months after this.
The Imperial War Museum has two boxes of letters and memorabilia associated with the Wilmot family. There are forty-four letters from Henry, covering the years from 1911, when he went to Canada, until his death in Lewisham Military Hospital in July 1917. Robert's 165 letters begin in January 1915. They include the time he was in hospital recovering from wounds, his return to the front, and his participation in the battles of the Somme and Arras. The eighty-one letters from Thomas begin when he went to Canada in June 1914; they express his attitude to the outbreak of war, and his war service from Loos to the Somme where he was killed. The collection also includes letters of condolence, newspaper cuttings and other associated ephemera. They provide an interesting insight into a family where, even after the death of three of her sons, the mother's patriotic loyalty stands firm.