Robert Abercromby Forbes-Sempill.

Lieutenant the Honourable Robert Abercromby Forbes-Sempill, 5th (Buchan and Formartin) Battn. (Territ.) the Gordon Highlanders, was the forth son of the 27th Lord Sempill, whose second son, Major the Hon. Douglas Forbes-Sempill, also fell in action, in command of the 1st Battalion Seaforth Highlanders in the Zakka Khel expedition in 1908.  The 1st Baron fell at Flodden Field, the 12th was Colonel of the Black Watch and afterwards commanded the left wind of the Royalist Army at Culloden, the 18th was severely wounded at Loos in command of the 8th Black Watch.

Lieutenant Forbes-Sempill was born on the 21st March 1870, at Fintray House Aberdeenshire, and was educated first at Inverness Academy, afterwards going to Cheltenham College.  When his education was completed he spent 9 years from 1887 to 1896 with Messrs. W. A. Graham & Co., in Liverpool, Glasgow and Bombay, and afterwards from 1897 to 1912 with the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation in Birma, Siam and Java. 

In 1912 he was obliged to give up the Esat for reasons of health and his activities then found their principal outlet in social services.  For two years he was honorary treasurer of the Maurice Hostel, Hoxton, in connection with which he did good work. 

He was a member of the Cavendish Club and took a special interest in music and sketching, fishing and shooting. 

On the outbreak of war he at once volunteered for service and in August 1914 he was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant in the 5th Battalion Gordon Highlanders, becoming Lieutenant in the following month.  Lieut. Forbes-Sempill was killed by a sniper on the 2nd June 1915, near Festubert whilst working with his men repairing a gap blown in the parapet of their trench.  He was buried in No. 4 Cemetery on the Rue de Bois, near Le Touret, France.

Soldiering was no natural part of his life, but when there came the nation’s call he was amongst the first of the men of peace to respond, overage as he was and in no sense robust.  As he had done with any work he ever touched, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the new conditions of his life, and devoted himself very specially to the service of his men, so that it was truly told that ‘as an officer he had become most efficient, and as a man he was fitted by his beautiful and winning character to lead his men anywhere.’ 

His Commanding Officer wrote of him : ‘He was never done thinking how he could make his men happier soldiers and better men,’ and from others come witness that ‘his record as a brave soldier and a Christian gentleman is one of which his Battalion is justly proud.’

Clutterbuck The Bond of Sacrifice.