Having grown up in Edinburgh, Willie Wallace went to King's College, Cambridge in 1912, where he was immediately noticed for his rugby-playing ability.

He was commissioned second lieutenant in The Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own) at the start of the First World War and departed for the Western Front a few weeks later.

The first points came from a try for Scotland by W. A. Stewart, converted by Hamilton, giving the visitors a five-point lead after four minutes.

[4] In the country's final game before the outbreak of the First World War, on 21 March Scotland played host to an English team that had already defeated Wales and Ireland.

The English were then playing with fourteen men after Cherry Pillman's leg was broken in a tackle, since substitutions at the time were not allowed.

[5][6] It was England's last international test on British soil before the First World War: of the 30 players in the match, 11 went on to be killed in it, including the Englishman Arthur James Dingle,[7] who died the same day as Wallace.

[8] Wallace, who was a cadet of the Officers Training Corps, was commissioned second lieutenant in the 5th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own) on 5 August 1914, while still an undergraduate.

[13] Both men were buried near to where they fell, but after the war their bodies were reinterred at the Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery (Grave reference XII.