For two-and-a-half anxious years, the family of Pte Reuben Joseph Wilmot, 10491, 2nd Battalion Border Regiment, knew nothing of his fate. Finally, in June 1917, his half-sister Ada Elizabeth, then living at 118 Chapel Street, Luton, learned that he had been taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans near Ypres on October 26th, 1914, and sadly had died from an old bullet wound while still in captivity on March 17th, 1917.

Pte Wilmot had gone to the Front shortly after the outbreak of war and was wounded in the head almost immediately on entering his first engagement. He received treatment at a hospital in Lille before his fateful rejoining of his regiment.

It was in a letter from the French Red Cross that Ada learned of his death at Libau [now Liepaja in Latvia]. The letter said Reuben's last moments were passed in the presence of familiar comrades who shared his captivity. He had been tended during his last days by two British soldiers of the Medical Corps.

Prior to enlistment, Reuben had lived with Ada and her husband Bertram (married 1908) at 90 Langley Road [now Latimer Road], Luton, while working as a wire frame maker. His mother Susannah had died in 1905 and his father Arthur in 1912.