On a cold Sunday morning in November 2007, nine members of the Cobbold family spanning three generations mustered outside the old War Office building in London's Whitehall. From there, having observed two minutes' silence with the thousands of others gathered to remember, they marched to the Cenotaph with a wreath of poppies. At the centre of the wreath was a card bearing the family crest, Rebus Angustis Fortis, ‘Strength in Adversity’. Attached to the wreath was a remembrance card which simply said ‘48 Cobbolds’; tucked behind this card was a list of the names of the family members killed in the world wars. The list makes poignant reading. That forty-eight members of the same family lost their lives during the two world wars is extraordinary enough, but for the Cobbold family this is only part of the story. The list of forty-eight records only those with the surname, Cobbold: scores of the family's kinsmen also lost their lives for their country.

No fewer than thirty-five of the ‘48’ were killed during the First World War, many of them young and of low rank: the youngest, Private Reginald Louis Cobbold of the Suffolk Regiment, was just seventeen when he was cut down. Two of the subjects considered here served as officers during the 1914–18 war. General Herbert Plumer had few superiors in the British Army and was among a minority of such elevated rank who emerged from the Great War with their reputations untarnished.