Son of George H. and Kate E. Robson, of 96 (92) Colchester Terrace, Sunderland.
Linda Gowans has submitted the following:-
Percy Blackwood Robson’s father George Hudspith Robson was a Schoolteacher from Whitfield, Northumberland, his mother Kate Ethel Robson from North Shields. Percy, born 1894, and his two younger sisters were born in Sunderland: in 1901 the family is at 20 Brinkburn Street, and in 1911 at 92 Colchester Terrace. Percy is an Apprentice Ship Plater.
He enlisted at Sunderland on October 21st 1914 in the 18th (Service) Battalion of the DLI, aged 20 years 6 months. He was 5' 7" inches tall. From the DLI’s Cocken Hall he went to Ripon, where on July 4th 1915 he overstayed his pass until 10.30 pm the following day, received three days’ C.B. and forfeited two days’ pay. Apart from that, he kept a clean Regimental Conduct Sheet until his death in the last two weeks of the war.
From late December 1915 to March 1916 Percy was in Eqypt, and then in France (we do not know when he became a Lance Corporal). From mid-1916 he received injuries which took him to a number of military hospitals, including 1st Birmingham War Hospital and the Military Convalescent Hospitals at Alnwick and Ashton-in-Makerfield. The first was on the notorious first day of the Somme, July 1st 1916, when he received a shrapnel wound to the left forearm. He rejoined his Battalion in December, but another ‘Blighty’ (a wound serious enough to merit being shipped back) found him in England again in May/June 1917. In late July he returned to France, with a posting to 19th DLI.
In 1918, when home on leave, an inflammation led to admission on October 2nd to the Military Hospital at Bede Tower. Ordered to report for embarkation at Dover as soon as he was discharged fit, on the 14th he set off to rejoin his unit in France – for just over a fortnight. The 19th was in the final advance in Flanders including the action of Tieghem, an attack on German troops on the River Scheldt on October 31st. It was a military success, but Lance-Corporal Robson died that day.
His body was one of many later exhumed and reburied. The letter sent by the Infantry Office at York to his father on January 3rd 1921 gives the location of the cemetery, and explains that the reburial was unavoidable so that scattered graves could be concentrated in proper cemeteries, adding, ‘I am to assure you that the work of re-burial has been carried out with every measure of care and reverence, and that special arrangements were made for the appropriate religious service to be held.’ His father chose to mark his new grave with the words ‘Fight the Good Fight’.
Percy Blackwood Robson is remembered at Sunderland on S140.009, S140.010 and S140.048 part 2
He is also remembered in The DLI Book of Remembrance page 301
