Edmund Wilson Killed in Belgium — Cambridge Blue and Yorkshire Player, July 1915

Wilson was a leg-side batsman of promise; the Cambridge side he played in had also included future Test cricketers.

He took a commission in the Rifle Brigade on the outbreak of war and went to France in early 1915. By July his battalion was holding part of the Hooge sector.

Wilson was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won a Blue. He played a handful of first-class matches for Yorkshire as an amateur. He was among the first wave of public-school officers to enlist in 1914 and held a commission in the Rifle Brigade. On 23 July 1915 his battalion was in the line at Hooge in the Ypres salient — a sector that had recently been hit by the first German use of liquid fire. Wilson was killed by sniper fire while moving along his trench. He was buried at Sanctuary Wood Cemetery. His death came in the same week as several other young first-class cricketers; Wisden's 1916 obituary section ran for over thirty pages.

“A young cricketer of promise and an officer of unusual courage.”

Buried at Sanctuary Wood Cemetery in Belgium. His name was added to the Cambridge University war memorial and to the Yorkshire cricketers' roll.