9th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (British Army)
Date Of Birth:
19/02/1896
Died:
01/07/1916 (Killed in Action)
Age:
20
Summary
Robert Irwin was the eldest son of William and Mary Irwin. Robert Irwin was born in Benburb, County Tyrone on 19th February 1896. He was the second of three children. His mother died on 26th February 1899. His father remarried. William Irvine was a game keeper. Robert travelled to Finner Camp, County Donegal to enlist. Private Robert Irwin was serving with the 9th Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in the Somme when he was killed in action on 1st July 1916.
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"
