Wyndham Halswelle (30 May 1882 – 31 March 1915 Wyndham Halswelle had a notable athletic career at Charterhouse School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before being commissioned into the Highland Light Infantry as a second lieutenant on 8 January 1901. Serving in South Africa in 1902 for the Second Boer War, Halswelle's ability was recognised by Jimmy Curran, a coach and amateur athlete. Halswelle returned to his regiment in January 1903, and was with the 1st battalion as they left South Africa for Egypt the same month. It was Curran who persuaded Halswelle to take up athletics seriously when his regiment returned to Edinburgh in 1904. Badger immediately signalled the judges to declare the race void.
Carpenter was disqualified, and the race was ordered to be rerun in lanes two days later; however, the other two U.S. runners refused to race, so a reluctant Halswelle ran the race by himself to win the gold As a result of the controversy, from the next Olympics in 1912 onwards all 400 metre races were run in lanes, and the International Amateur Athletic Federation was founded to establish uniform worldwide rules for athletics.
The controversy soured Halswelle's view of athletics. He was also under pressure from his senior officers, who felt he was being exploited, and he retired from athletics after a farewell appearance at the 1908 Glasgow Rangers Sports. on 31 March 1915 aged 32 while attempting to rescue an injured fellow officer. Earlier in the same battle (12 March) he was hit by shrapnel or shell fragments while leading his men across an area known as Layes Brook but despite his wounds he refused to be evacuated and continued at the front, although heavily bandaged.
In the issue of the HLI regimental magazine that announced his death also appeared a piece he wrote days before it. It described a battle where 79 of his fellow soldiers died to gain 15 yards:
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"I called on the men to get over the parapet... There is great difficulty in getting out of a trench, especially for small men laden with a pack, rifle and perhaps 50 rounds in the pouch, and a bandolier of 50 rounds hung around them, and perhaps four feet of slippery clay perpendicular wall with sandbags on the top. I got about three men hit actually on top of the parapet. I made a dash at the parapet and fell back. The Jocks then heaved me up and I jumped into a ditch – an old trench filled with liquid mud – which took me some time to get out of."
In 2003, he was posthumously inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame. His Olympic medals and other trophies are displayed there.
See also
- List of Olympians killed in World War I