 | Palestine 1917 A personal account of all ranks of the Yeomanry regiment, by a soldier who served in Sinai, Palestine and Syria. The Yeomanry regiments were originally raised in 1794, as a part of the volunteer forces, it was administered by the Home Office until 1855 when the War Office took over. The Yeomanry is most part consisted of the 'Yeoman of England, with noblemen and gentlemen as officers'. Wilson often touches upon the daunting conditions which were the ever-present background to the campaigns in which he took part. A likeable and remarkable character of the old yeoman class, his letters and correspondence notes the elation, dejection, of tedium and anxiety of desert warfare. Robert Henry Wilson was bom in Shrivenham on 19th January 1894 the fourth son of a well-known fanner dealer. With his younger sister he attended the local dame school and then went to Burford Grammar as a boarder. In 1904 the family moved to Prebendal Farm at Bishopstone on historic Wiltshire downland, where his father leased a sizeable acreage from the Church Commissioners. After leaving school Robert joined his father and three older brothers to work the farm and seems to have enjoyed a full sporting and social life before leaving home, on his twenty-first birthday, to join the Berkshire Yeomanry. |
