Major Walter George Burnett Dickinson FRSE FRCVS TD (22 April 1858 – 6 August 1914) was a British veterinary surgeon,[1] and (officially rather than correctly) one of the first "victims" of the First World War.
When the threat of war increased in July 1914, the government took the precaution of buying horses from farmers across the country to meet the requirements of possible mobilisation.
Dickinson’s combination of military position and veterinary knowledge made him the first choice to oversee this duty in the Boston area.
On 6 August, two days after war was declared, and 36 hours into the conflict, he was visiting a Butterwick farm and, having negotiated the sale of some horses, he returned to his car and collapsed dead.
[1] He was buried in Boston Cemetery beneath a standard Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone, listing him as a major in the Royal Field Artillery.