Robert Ernest Wall
Rank: Private (2nd Class)
Regiment: 6th Squadron, Royal Air Force / Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment)
Other Info: Robert Wall died on 2nd November 1918. He is buried at Hastings Cemetery.
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This man was born 7 April 1888, in Kennington, Surrey. A tree on Ancestry states that he was the son of Emma Wall by Louis Holman, a coachman who was her boarder in the 1901 census in Camberwell. They were both lodgers (and single), she a charwoman, at an address in Kennington in the 1891 census, when he was a horsekeeper.
Robert married, 12 March 1911, St John's, Newington, Surrey, Georgina Thornton Roberts, daughter of a deceased waiter [in the 1911 census, Westminster, he is actually manager of the Pelican Club]. His marriage certificate gives 22 as the age of both him and his bride, yet just over seven years later he was 31 at death according to the death indexes. The marriage certificate says he was a builder's labourer, son of Henry Wall, dealer. He had at least two sons born to him.
I have tried to understand his military service using a variety of records on both the Ancestry and Find My Past websites.
According to his RAF service records, he was a stoker before joining the armed forces, and was initially in the 11th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. The record implies he joined up on the 3 July 1916, but this is not his date of entry into the Middlesex Regiment, nor into the Royal Flying Corps. I do not know what his unit was. The RAF record also says that he was a deserter between 4 December 1916 and 9 August 1917. He was awaiting trial until the 28 August 1917.
He had actually attested for the Middlesex Regiment on the 18 August 1914, London, when he said he was a labourer, age 26. He was discharged on the 23 October 1914. The cause was defective vision.
He joined the Royal Flying Corps, later renamed the Royal Air Force, on the 15 February 1918, with the service number 138548. His wife died in late 1918 in London. Pension records show that his war gratuity was paid to the children's guardian, Mrs Elizabeth Roberts.
He died at St John's Hospital, Hastings, of pneumonia. His widow's address was given as 21 Ethelbred Street, London.