Robert Anderson was born in Drumglass, Dungannon about 1874. Robert later moved to Belfast. Robert Anderson and Catherine Davidson were married on 18th April 1892 in Belfast. They lived at Crimea Street and had at least seven children. Robert was a sawyer in the employment of Thomas Dickson & Sons in Belfast. He was wounded in November 1915, but recovered and returned to the front. Private Robert Anderson was serving with the 9th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles when he was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916. He was 43 years old.
The Thiepval Memorial will be found on the D73, next to the village of Thiepval, off the main Bapaume to Albert road (D929). Each year a major ceremony is held at the memorial on 1 July. The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme is a war memorial to 72,337 missing British and South African servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme of the First World War between 1915 and 1918, with no known grave. It is near the village of Thiepval, Picardy in France. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Thiepval has been described as "the greatest executed British work of monumental architecture of the twentieth century"
