PRIVATE WILLIAM ERNEST HOBBS: 16935
2nd Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment
William was one of the four surviving children born to Ernest and Elizabeth Hobbs. The family lived at 68 South Street and Ernest ran his own drapery business in Bridport.
Elizabeth and her two daughters, Gertrude and Gwladys, assisted in the business and brother Alfred was apprenticed to a draper in Sherborne. William did not enter the family business. When he was nineteen, he was apprenticed to an Ironmonger in the town.
After the declaration of war William and brother Alfred joined the 2nd Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment. Both were deployed to Mesopotamia, to guard and defend the oil supplies in the area around the rivers Tigris and Euphrates following Turkey’s entry in the war.
Conditions in the area were difficult and as well as battle casualties, the regiment suffered heavy losses from heat stroke, cholera and dysentery.
Alongside his brother, William took part in the attacks to relieve the beleaguered men trapped in Kut al Amara. He survived those attacks only to contract dysentery when the regiment was withdrawn downstream to reform for a final attack on the town in December 1916.
He was placed in the care of the General Hospital in Amara, but died there on November 28th.
Ernest and Emma lost both their sons, dying within eleven days of one another.
William is buried in the Amara War Cemetery, Iraq.