Gordon Chesney Wilson

Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon Chesney Wilson (3 August 1865 – 6 November 1914) was a British Army officer and husband of the war correspondent Lady Sarah Wilson. As an Eton College student he assisted in thwarting Roderick Maclean's assassination attempt on Queen Victoria in 1882, before joining the Royal Horse Guards in 1887. Wilson was promoted quickly, and as a captain was appointed aide-de-camp to Robert Baden-Powell at the start of the Second Boer War, in which role he served through the Siege of Mafeking. He was created a Member of the Royal Victorian Order in 1901.

During the inter-war years Wilson joined his friend Winston Churchill on a fact-finding trip to East Africa, and then participated in a controversial treasure hunting expedition in Jerusalem. Having been promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1907, when the First World War began in 1914 Wilson took the Royal Horse Guards to the Western Front. Fighting in the First Battle of Ypres, on 6 November 1914 he was shot in the head and killed while repelling a German breakthrough at Kleine Zillebeke.

Early life Gordon Chesney Wilson was born at the Longerenong homestead, near Horsham, Victoria, in Australia, on 3 August 1865. He was the eldest son of the politician and philanthropist Sir Samuel Wilson and Jean Campbell. He had three younger brothers, including the Olympian Herbert Haydon Wilson, and three sisters. The elder Wilson was an ex-miner who had made a fortune as a pastoralist, and the family spent time in both England and Australia. In 1877 Wilson was enrolled at Melbourne Grammar School, but around two years later he moved to England, attending Eton College.

Military career Marriage

Wilson's first military service was in the part-time militia. He became a lieutenant in the 3rd (Royal Bucks Militia) Battalion, Oxfordshire Light Infantry, on 17 January 1885. He transferred to the 3rd and 4th Battalions, the Duke of Wellington's (West Riding Regiment), on 25 June of the same year. Wilson then joined the regular British Army as a second lieutenant on 4 May 1887, replacing a dead subaltern in the Royal Horse Guards (Blues). He was promoted to lieutenant on 5 December 1888. He was promoted to captain on 21 November the following year, at the same time as which he is recorded as serving in the Sovereign's Escort. |group=Note

The Wilsons arrived at Bulawayo in August. Unable to locate a recruiting post at Mafeking, in Bechuanaland, because of negative associations with the Jameson Raid, Baden-Powell instead situated one at Ramatlhabama just to the north. Wilson was frequently employed travelling between headquarters and the recruitment post, with new men returning to Bulawayo to be trained. He also spent time with Baden-Powell on the border itself. In September the start of the Boer War came nearer and Baden-Powell was finally allowed to garrison Mafeking, taking Wilson with him. There they began to prepare for a protracted siege, training up a town guard and constructing artillery emplacements.

Sarah joined Wilson in Mafeking, the couple living in a small cottage in the town. Preparations for a siege continued into early October as the Boers massed on the border of Bechuanaland; with interest in the area increasing, Sarah was appointed by the Daily Mail to become their war correspondent covering the siege after the previous man was captured by the Boers attempting to leave. During the war he was twice mentioned in dispatches, and received the Queen's South Africa Medal with three clasps. By this time Wilson had struck up a friendship with Sarah's nephew, the politician Winston Churchill. In the same year Churchill, as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonial Office, went abroad on a five-month fact-finding trip. When he arrived in Malta he expected to travel on with his cousin Freddie Guest, but Guest's wife was about to give birth. Churchill instead invited Wilson to join him. They sailed across the Red Sea on board HMS Venus, reaching Mombasa in November. From there they used the Uganda Railway to reach Nairobi, where they hunted rhino. Afterwards the party met with Daudi Cwa II in Uganda and again frequently hunted, and subsequently arrived in Khartoum on 23 December. Churchill and Wilson returned home via Paris in mid-January 1908. Churchill wrote to Edward VII during the journey that Wilson was:

Churchill published a record of the trip in the book My African Journey in 1909, including photographs provided by Wilson. In 1910 Wilson spent some time in Jerusalem, and in early 1911 he became involved in his younger brother Clarence's work as part of the Parker Expedition, an attempt to find treasure in excavations of Solomon's Temple. In April the group used a German psychic to attempt to find the Ark of the Covenant, digging around Solomon's Stables. They found nothing there but then gained permission to excavate in the Dome of the Rock itself. As the Dome was a sacred space to Jews and Muslims, the expedition was nervous about digging there and therefore only did so at night, while wearing Arabic clothing. Having bribed locals to assist them they explored tunnels under the Dome, digging for nine nights.

On 12 April the diggers were discovered at work and exposed to the general public. A demonstration of 2,000 Muslims formed and riots were feared; on 16 April an enquiry was launched into the affair and two days later the expedition fled to Jaffa. There under the pretence of preparing to host a party they escaped in Clarence's yacht. Wilson was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant-colonel on 7 October and given command of his regiment.

First World War When the First World War began in 1914 the Royal Horse Guards were sent to the Western Front. They joined the 7th Cavalry Brigade, made up of the Household Cavalry regiments, in October. On 18 October the brigade entrenched itself west of Zandvoorde, ready for the First Battle of Ypres. The following day they were attacked by a greater German force, taking heavy casualties because, cavalry not being provided with entrenching tools, their trenches were too shallow. On 30 October the Germans began a new offensive meant to break through to Ypres, with the most brutal attack going against the units of the Household Cavalry. The 7th Brigade was initially in reserve, based in a wood in the Ypres Salient. On 6 November the Prussian Guards broke through the line in front of the brigade at Kleine Zillebeke, and it was sent forward to stem the attack. Wilson led his men into action as dismounted cavalry, and the Germans were pushed back into the wood at Zwarteleen, around one mile from Zillebeke. As the fighting became increasingly confused, Wilson was killed at around dusk. Captain Sir George Arthur recorded that:

Wilson's will was proved on 23 December; he left Sarah, who was at the time running a military hospital in Boulogne, £189,230-17s.

Wilson was posthumously awarded the 1914 Star, British War Medal, and Victory Medal, having also been created a member of the French Legion of Honour.

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