Rev. David Youngson has submitted the following.
2nd Lieutenant William Horace TRATTLES
Hampshire Regiment 13th Battalion
Attached Worcester Regiment 9th Battalion
The son of William Thomas Trattles of ‘Rosebank’, Cranbourne Terrace, Stockton-on-Tees and the late Agnes Jemima Trattles he was born in 1891 and some records suggest he was born in Iraq. Commissioned 2nd Lieutenant (London Gazette 9th June 1915). He was killed in action on the 25th January 1917 aged 26. He is buried in Amara War Cemetery, Iraq, Grave Reference XIX.F.3. His name appears in the Book of Remembrance in Stockton Parish Church.
Amara was occupied by the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force on 3 June 1915 and it immediately became a hospital centre. The accommodation for medical units on both banks of the Tigris was greatly increased during 1916 and in April 1917, seven general hospitals and some smaller units were stationed there.
Amara War Cemetery contains 4,621 burials of the First World War. In 1933, all of the headstones were removed from this cemetery when it was discovered that salts in the soil were causing them to deteriorate. Instead a screen wall was erected with the names of those buried in the cemetery engraved upon it. Plot XXV is a Collective Grave, the individual burial places within this are not known.
The current political problems in Iraq has meant that the CWGC are unable to maintain this cemetery. The names are now recorded in a two volume book which can be view at the CWGC headquarters at Maidenhead.
William Horace Trattles is remembered in Stockton on S138.18 page 57
