The grave of Raymond Asquith, Guillemont Road Cemetery, October 2015
Raymond Asquith was the eldest son of prime minister H.H.Asquith. Educated at Winchester and Oxford, where he easily took first class honours, his was one of the outstanding minds of his generation. Called to the Bar in 1904, he served as a junior counsel on the Titanic inquiry, and was a prospective Liberal candidate when the war intervened. He requested a transfer from staff to his battalion just prior to the Somme battle. Wounded in the chest during the advance on Lesboeufs, he died whilst being carried back.
A fortnight earlier Asquith had been on a training exercise when he received a telegram instructing him to meet his father at 'crossroads K.6d', those that lie to this day at the foot of Bois Francois below Fricourt.
'I vaulted into the saddle and bumped off to Fricourt where I arrived exactly at the appointed time. I waited for an hour on a very muddy road congested with troops and lorries and surrounded by barking guns. Then two handsome motors from G.H.Q. arrived, the P.M. in one of them with two staff officers, and in the other Bongie, Hankey and one or two of those moth-eaten nondescripts who hang about the corridors of Downing Street in the twilight region between the civil and domestic service. We went up to see some of the captured German dug-outs and just as we were arriving at our first objective the Boches began putting over a few 4.2 shells from their field howitzer. The PM was not discomposed by this, but the GHQ chauffeur to whom I handed over my horse to hold, flung the reins into the air and himself flat on his belly in the mud . . .'The party was escorted round the dug-out by several generals and after the shelling died down 'the P.M. drove off to luncheon with the G.O.C. 4th Army' while Asquith rode back to his billets. It was their last meeting.
Raymond Asquith lies in Guillemont Road CWGC. On his headstone are inscribed the concluding words of Shakespeare's 'Henry V';
'Small time but in that small most greatly lived this star of England'
Raymond Asquith was the eldest son of prime minister H.H.Asquith. Educated at Winchester and Oxford, where he easily took first class honours, his was one of the outstanding minds of his generation. Called to the Bar in 1904, he served as a junior counsel on the Titanic inquiry, and was a prospective Liberal candidate when the war intervened. He requested a transfer from staff to his battalion just prior to the Somme battle. Wounded in the chest during the advance on Lesboeufs, he died whilst being carried back.
A fortnight earlier Asquith had been on a training exercise when he received a telegram instructing him to meet his father at 'crossroads K.6d', those that lie to this day at the foot of Bois Francois below Fricourt.
'I vaulted into the saddle and bumped off to Fricourt where I arrived exactly at the appointed time. I waited for an hour on a very muddy road congested with troops and lorries and surrounded by barking guns. Then two handsome motors from G.H.Q. arrived, the P.M. in one of them with two staff officers, and in the other Bongie, Hankey and one or two of those moth-eaten nondescripts who hang about the corridors of Downing Street in the twilight region between the civil and domestic service. We went up to see some of the captured German dug-outs and just as we were arriving at our first objective the Boches began putting over a few 4.2 shells from their field howitzer. The PM was not discomposed by this, but the GHQ chauffeur to whom I handed over my horse to hold, flung the reins into the air and himself flat on his belly in the mud . . .'The party was escorted round the dug-out by several generals and after the shelling died down 'the P.M. drove off to luncheon with the G.O.C. 4th Army' while Asquith rode back to his billets. It was their last meeting.
Raymond Asquith lies in Guillemont Road CWGC. On his headstone are inscribed the concluding words of Shakespeare's 'Henry V';
'Small time but in that small most greatly lived this star of England'
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