Gavin Ralston Mure Caldwell was born in Kent in 1897, the only child of the Rev. William McKennal Caldwell and his wife Jessie Elsie. The Rev. Caldwell was Rector of East Ilsley from 1913 to 1916. Gavin attended Clifton College in Bristol, joined the Officers Training Corps there and was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders on 21 October 1914. Transferred to the Coldstream Guards in August 1916, he went to France in December.
Gavin saw action in the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), where on the first day his battalion took heavy casualties. He was left in command of his company as the sole surviving officer. Tragically his luck ran out just a month before the Armistice.
From the Appendix to the battalion war diary covering 9 October 1918: