"LOOKING AFTER HIS MEN"

CAPTAIN CHARLES ROBERT FORBES HAY-WEBB

ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY

28TH DECEMBER 1916 AGE 22

BURIED: DICKEBUSCH NEW MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM


The Times
January 5 1917
"Captain Charles Robert Hay-Webb, R.F.A. killed on December 28, aged 22, was the third and only surviving son of Mr C.R. Hay-Webb of Moohtapore, Behar, India, grandson of Mr T. Bonville Were, of Hay Broadclyst, Devon. ... he passed into Woolwich in January 1912, and was gazetted in July 1913 to the Royal Field Artillery. ... He went to the front in January 1915, was severely wounded in the second battle of Ypres on 30 April 1915, and was on medical leave for 11 months. He returned to the front in November [1916]. His eldest brother, Captain Allan Bonville Hay-Webb, died of wounds in Gallipoli in August 1915.."

"The third and only surviving son"; there's nothing to say how the unnamed brother died but it wasn't in the war. Mr and Mrs Charles Hay-Webb had one remaining child, a daughter called Adele.
Captain Hay-Webb's mother chose his inscription. It is in inverted commas, and whilst I would suggest that she is quoting from a letter of condolence, the words create a lovely image of an officer still looking after his men, the prime responsibility of an officer, in death as he had done in life.