Captain and Acting Major, Royal Armoured Corps
Born: April 10th 1910
Died: May 22nd 1944
Age at Death: 34
Killed in action, May 22nd 1944
Gilbert was born in Llandrindod Wells, Wales, on 10 April 1910 to Emily Buchanan (née Shannon) and Harris Buchanan, an elderly retired major who had fought in the Second Afghan War of 1878–80. His grandfather, Gilbert John Lane Buchanan, had been a general. After leaving Brighton College, where he played football, fives, and a fairy in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, Buchanan did not choose the military as a career like his father and grandfather, but instead went into insurance.
During the Second World War he joined the 51st (Leeds Rifles) Royal Tank Regiment, which in 1940 guarded the Northumberland coast against the threat of German invasion. In 1943 the regiment distinguished itself by defending the line against a German counteroffensive in Tunisia. In April 1944 the regiment embarked for Naples. A month later it was supporting the Canadian infantry in an attack on Cassino, during which Buchanan was killed in action when a shell hit his tank. He is buried in the Cassino War Cemetery.