On Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Belgium is the name of 23198 Private Ralph Robinson, serving with the 1st Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers who died 27/03/1916.
The son of John and Margaret Ann Robinson, of Jubilee Cottage, Embleton, Alnwick, Northumberland.
David Thompson has submitted the following:-
Ralph Robinson was born in late 1885, at Longhoughton, Northumberland, the son of John Robinson (b. Rennington, Northumberland; a Carter at Embleton Quarry) and his wife, Margaret Ann (née Oliver; b. Middleton, Wooler), of Jubilee Cottage, Embleton, Northumberland.
Seven siblings – Jane (b. 1872, at Stamford, near Embleton); Henry E. (b. 1875); Sarah (b. 1887, at Longhoughton); James Oliver (b. 1882); John Andrew (b. 1887); Leonard Edmundson (b. 1889); and Elizabeth (b. 1892, at Rennington).
Prior to living at Jubilee Cottage, which the family moved to in 1916, they had lived in three rooms at Embleton South Farm (from sometime before 1911 until 1915); Golden Moor, Denwick (1901); and Kiln House at Little Houghton (1891).
Enlisted at Alnwick, Northumberland on 20 July 1915. As Robinson was not entitled to receive the 1914-15 Star it means he didn’t get to France and Flanders until after 1 January 1916. It’s likely that his first action will have been that at St. Eloi (14-15 March 1916).
At this time, the Germans still held the high ground on the Messines Ridge. Underground mines were constructed below their positions in readiness to initiate the British attack by blowing up the Mound and enemy front-line trenches.
Promptly at 04:15 hours on 27 March 1916 an opening salvo from forty-one guns and howitzers up to 9.2 inches in calibre rained down on the enemy, and the six mines were blown at intervals of a few seconds.
British troops spent much of the night lying prone in chilly mud. Although the Northumberland Fusiliers’ 1st Battalion attack started well, it eventually became bogged down in the waterlogged landscape. The battalion sustained casualties of two officers and twenty-nine ORs killed; four officers and 124 ORs wounded; and 21 ‘Missing’. Robinson was one of those lost at this time.
Ralph Robinson is remembered in Embleton on E27.01
