A fighting M.P.

Reported in the Evening Express although not from Liverpool or the Merseyside region is the report of the death in action of the Member of Parliament for Hitchin. Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson K.C.I.E. C.S.I. C.M.G. D.S.O. Pilot Officer R.A.F.V.R. [ air gunner ] and retired Lieutenant Colonel . Arnold Talbot Wilson was born on 18th July 1884 , and educated at Clifton College where his father James Wilson was the headmaster. He attended Sandhurst Military College gaining the King's medal and sword of honour , and was commissioned to the unattached list of the Indian Army on 19 August 1903. Spending his first year in India attached to the 1st Battalion the Wiltshire regiment before joining the 32 Sikh Pioneers on 18th December 1904.In the same year he was attached to the Bengal Lancers and posted to Iran in order to guard the British Consulate in Ahwaz . He transferred to the Indian Political Department in 1907 and he was sent to the Arabian Gulf as a political officer .In 1915 he was appointed assistant to Sir Percy Cox in Baghdad , later becoming the Acting Civil Commissioner for Mesopotamia . He achieved the rank of Brevet Lieutenant Colonel in August 1918, and he retired from the Indian Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in August 1921. He then joined the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as manager of their Middle Eastern operations leaving them in 1932. In 1933 he won a by election in Hitchen and became a Member of Parliament . In October 1939 he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as a Pilot Officer [ air gunner ] after mentioning in Parliament that as a fit man he would not hide behind his age and would fight in the war . On 31 May 1940 he was killed in action flying as an air gunner in a  Wellington  bomber number L7791 over Dunkirk. He is buried with his pilot Sergeant James Francis Brown in Eringhem Churchyard Northern France .