Robert Henry Wilson was bom in Shrivenham on 19th January 1894 the fourth son of a well-known fanner dealer. With his younger sister he attended the local dame school and then went to Burford Grammar as a boarder. In 1904 the family moved to Prebendal Farm at Bishopstone on historic Wiltshire downland, where his father leased a sizeable acreage from the Church Commissioners. After leaving school Robert joined his father and three older brothers to work the farm and seems to have enjoyed a full sporting and social life before leaving home, on his twenty-first birthday, to join the Berkshire Yeomanry.