Tattingstone remembers...Robert Amoss

15 December 1877-20 September 1915 Private 16808 1st Battalion Suffolk Regiment

by Jane Kirk - Village Recorder

​The story of Private Robert Amoss in WW1 is rather poignant and very short.  As a boy Robert had a longing to be a soldier but his parents were very much against him joining the Army.  However with the outbreak of WW1, at the call of his country, he finally got his chance and he enlisted in the Suffolk Regiment on 5th December 1914 at the age of 37.

On 6th July the following year he went to France with his Battalion and after only a few weeks at the Front he became ill and died of sickness in the hospital at Etaples near Havre on 20 September 1915. Robert was buried in Etaples Military Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France.

​Robert was the son of Elias and Liza Amoss and was born on 15th December 1877 in Stutton, his mother’s family home, his father coming from further afield at Playford.

When War was declared Robert Amoss had been living at The Wonder for some ten years and was working at Pond Hall Farm as a horseman, so interestingly he would definitely have known Amos Leeks who also worked there and who had died in France earlier in 1915.

Robert left a widow Hannah Adelaide whom he had married in 1904 and two young sons George aged 6 and Alfred aged 4.  Hannah’s maiden name was Scott and she was born in Stutton although her father came from Tattingstone.  At the time they got married Hannah was a domestic servant but I don’t know where.

​Sad to say the Amoss family suffered another loss when Robert’s youngest son Alfred was also a victim of war – he died at the end of the Second World War whilst serving in Singapore as a Gunner in the Royal Artillery.

Acknowledgements to Jean Austin and Jennifer Jones for War Graves information.