Sterling R W Lt 3rd Attd 1st Royal Scots Fusiliers
Source : For Remembrance – Soldier Poets Who Have Fallen In The War
STERLING, ROBERT WILLIAM, Lieut.,
3rd, attd. 1st, Battn. Royal Scots Fusiliers, elder s. of John Lockhart Sterling, of 30, Ashton Gardens, Glasgow, by his wife, Clara Frances, dau. of James Lowe, of Lancashire; b. Glasgow, 19 Nov. 1903; educ. Glasgow Academy; Sedbergh School, and Pembroke College, Oxford (scholar), where he took a second in Honour Mods., and had just completed his second year when war was declared in Aug. 1914; volunteered for foreign service and was given a 2nd Lieutenancy in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, 15 Aug. 1914, and promoted Lieut. March, 1915; took a draft of his regt. to France in the middle of Feb. 1915; was attd. to the 1st Battn., and was killed in action near Ypres, 23 April, 1915; unm. Buried in the Military Cemetery, Dickebusche. His commanding officer wrote: “He was in command of a trench which was of the utmost importance, and had held it most gallantly all day. He was killed about 8 p.m. I cannot tell you how much the Scots Fusiliers mourn his loss. He was quite one of my best.” In 1914 he wrote the Newdigate prize poem on the Burial of Sophocles, which he read at the Encaenia in the June of that year. His younger brother, 2nd Lieut. John Lockhart Sterling, 3rd Battn. R.S.F., attd. 2nd Battn. R.S.F., was killed on 28 Sept. 1915, before Hulluch, France. Two editions of The Poems of Robert Sterling were published by Oxford friends in 1916.
Source : De Ruvigny’s Roll Of Honour Vol 1