Category: Military
Rank: Private 34573
Regiment or Ship: 16th Bn Middlesex Regiment
Service Number(s): 34573
Occupation: Market Garden worker (1911 census). Horseman (Army Service Papers).
Date of Birth: 1897
Place of Birth: Hooe, East Sussex
Date of Death: 10.10.1917
Place of Death: Bleuet Farm, Ieper, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium.
Place of Burial / Memorials:
Bleuet Farm Cemetery, Ieper, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium (Grave/Memorial Reference:I. A. 19.)
Address: Hall’s Cross Farm, Hooe
Photos and newspaper articles
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Family Information
Parents: George Vitler, born 1849, in Hooe, Sussex and Ellen Cheal, born 1853, in Bexhill, Sussex. They were married in 1876, in Hailsham district.
Siblings:
George William, born 1880, Bexhill, Sussex.
Alfred, born 1881, Bexhill, Sussex.
Charles William, born 1883, Bexhill, Sussex.
Arthur Thomas, born 1885, Bexhill, Sussex.
Frank, born 1888, Hooe, Sussex.
Muriel Elizabeth, born 1889, Hooe, Sussex, married Percival Frank Stevenson
Ida Ellen born 1892, Hooe, Sussex, married Baker
Horace Marchant, born 1893, Hooe, Sussex. Emigrated to Canada at some time before the 1911 census. On his Canadian Attestation Papers, dated September 1915, he states that he was not married. He was mortally wounded at the battle of Courcelette, on 18th sept.1916. SEE W0147 VITLER. W0147 Horace Marchant Vitler
Alice Winifred, born 1895, Hooe, Sussex, married Collins.
No record of a marriage has been found.
First World War Experience
Some of Robert’s Army service records have survived but they are so badly damaged, and the writing so bad or so faint, that very little sense can be made of what is written there.
On one sheet, part of a paragraph still exists but only the words “…d of wounds Rec’d” can be made out and, obviously, was “died of wounds received”. Another says that he joined the “B. E. F. France on 3-12-16.