Pte 57830 Albert Ernest Robson

In 1901 the family is living in South Shields, at 16/18 Alnwick Road, with three children.  His father is a railway engine driver, Albert is 3.  Also in the household is his aunt Annie Robson, 29, a dressmaker, and a boarder, John Robson (no relationship given), 18, a railway engine stoker. 

 

By 1911 they have moved to 3 All Saints Road, New Shildon, His father is a railway engine driver, his mother is 40, Margaret is 15, Albert, 13, George, 11, and Joseph 7, are at school.

 

He enlisted in Darlington and was formerly 15825, Army Cyclist Corps and serving in the 19^th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 57830 when he was killed in action on the 30^th March 1918 aged 20 during the German Spring Offensive.

As Graham Maddocks points out in his book The Liverpool Pals, the CWGC records 38 men of the 19^th Bn of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as killed in action on 30^th March 1918 when as the Battalion diary below, shown in bold type, records that the men were actually out of the line and safely on the way to St Valery- sur- Somme.

The composite battalion moved off from ROUVREL at 8.30 am at 50 yards interval between companies, arriving at SALEUX at 3.20 pm where they entrained, detraining at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME the same night. The night was spent at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME.

Apart from those whose bodies were not found and are commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial all but two have burial sites at Savy British Cemetery, which itself is within a couple of miles of Roupy and contains most of the identified men killed on 22^nd March 1918. Therefore, it would appear that the date of death for these men shown as 30^th March 1918 is purely an arbitrary one and that they were in fact killed on 22^nd March.

Albert Ernest is commemorated in Savy British Cemetery, where a Special Kipling Memorial reads:

“To the Memory of these 68 British Soldiers who were killed in action in March 1918 and buried at the time in the German Cemetery on the St. Quentin - Roupy Road, whose graves are now lost.”

 The Inscription on Albert's headstone reads:

“PEACE PERFECT PEACE”

Savy was taken by the 32nd Division on the 1st April 1917, after hard fighting, and Savy Wood on the 2nd. On the 21st March 1918 Savy and Roupy were successfully defended by the 30th Division, but the line was withdrawn after nightfall. The village and the wood were retaken on the 17th September 1918 by the 34th French Division, fighting on the right of the British IX Corps.

Savy British Cemetery was made in 1919, and the graves from the battlefields and from the following small cemeteries in the neighbourhood were concentrated into it.

There are now over 850, 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, more than half are unidentified. Memorials are erected in the cemetery to 68 soldiers (chiefly of the 19th King's Liverpools and the 17th Manchesters), buried by the Germans in their cemetery on the St. Quentin-Roupy road, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.

The Cemetery covers an area of 2,555 square metres and is enclosed by a low rubble wall.

Albert was initially declared Missing between 22-30 March.  International Red Cross records, based on information submitted by the Germans, show that his body was found by a German Sanitation Company, and his paybook sent in as evidence of death.  Another German record (listing Albert Ernst Robson as Lieut., King’s Liverpool Reg’t) shows date of death 23/3/1918 following a gunshot wound to the stomach and buried in Savy exit to Roupy, reported by the Red Cross, Frankfurt am Main, 29/4/1918.  (There is no Lieutenant Robson who died with the K.L.R. so this must be Albert.)

 

CWGC notes that Albert was buried in Roupy Road German Cemetery. Savy British Cemetery was made in 1919, and the graves from the battlefields and small cemeteries in the area were concentrated into it, including St. Quentin-Roupy Road German Cemetery at L'Epine-de-Dallon, which contained the graves of 232 British soldiers who fell in March 1918.

 

The CWGC certificate gives his date death as 22nd March 1918 but his headstone and the Graves Registration report show the 30th.

 

Albert’s name was published among the list of Missing in the Weekly Casualty List on 4th June 1918.  It is not known when his family was officially informed of his death.

 

Soldiers’ Effects, giving date of death as 22/3/1918, shows his mother Caroline, living at 3 All Saints Road, New Shildon, received Albert’s Army effects and a War Gratuity of £13-10s.   It is not clear from the pension card if a pension was awarded.

 

It is not clear when his father died.  His mother died, widowed, in 1937, aged 66.

 

Albert is commemorated on the following memorials -

New Shildon Memorial

North Eastern Railway Institute, Shildon.