Wilson was 10 years younger than Copland, 17 years younger than Brigden and more than 30 years younger than Giblin. His short life previous to his meeting the other members of platoon requires little elaboration.

He was born on 7 April 1904 at Ulverstone, a settlement of 1129 people living in 219 dwellings in north-western Tasmania. His father was a builder of limited formal education, but possessed of ‘an intelligent and inquisitive mind, and a sharp, if sardonic sense of humour’ (Cornish 2002, p. 8). Roland was the second son of five boys.

At the age of 14, with the First World War sustaining the Edwardian enthusiasm for ‘boy soldiers’, he was inducted into junior military cadets, weighing just 25 kilograms. His slight build and short height were to remain a ‘defining feature’. One later acquaintance recalled: ‘My first impression, of course, as everybody’s was of his diminutive stature’ (Stone 1997, p. 5). The other members of the Platoon were tall: both Giblin and Brigden were six-footers. Roland Wilson in adulthood was scarcely five feet two inches tall (Cornish 2002 p. 7).

His stature did not prevent his success on the playing field. And his success there did not preclude even more in the schoolroom. Nominally Protestant, Wilson’s formal education began at Ulverstone’s convent school – the same which Giblin’s political peer J. A. Lyons had attended. The boy was quick, and he won a bursary in the newly founded Devonport High School. In 1921 he gained the highest marks in Economics, Book-keeping, Geography and French, a feat which carried with it prizes in those four subjects. He also excelled in the state as a whole such that he was awarded the ‘William Robert Giblin Scholarship’, established in memory of Lyndhurst’s father. Wilson was about to come to the attention of Lyndhurst.

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The First World War had been a social super nova that had blown apart old bonds, and scattered surviving materials. Four such fragments had been randomly thrown into proximity and were about to converge through the power of intellectual gravitation.