Alexander Sumner's Story.
Birkenhead News 22 September 1915“A SOLDIER AND A GENTLEMAN.”
Gallant 4th Cheshire Soldier.
DIES OF WOUNDS AT MALTA.
Day by day the toll of the 4th Cheshires at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, is lengthening, and yet another name has to be added to the roll of honour. Corporal Alexander Sumner Robinson, who was but 25 years of age, was the only son of Mr. And Mrs. S. H. Robinson, of 2, Cedar Street, the Woodlands, Tranmere, and had been a popular and well-respected member of the Tranmere Company (the old “E” Company of the “Greys”) for eight years prior to the outbreak of war. He was employed at Messrs. Lever Bros,’ offices, Port Sunlight, and went out to Gallipoli with his regiment on August 9th, and cane through the ensuing fierce fighting, as he said in a letter, “fit and unscratched and in the best of spirits.” In all the letters received from him he showed the true spirit of the British soldier. Not a word of complaint nor a mention of difficulties or hardships - his strongest expression of the hardships of the conflict being “We have had rather a rough time of it,”
After having been in the trenches for seventeen days without having had a wash, shave, or even his boots off, he was shot through the forehead by a sniper while walking down the trench on August 24th. Perhaps the words of an intimate friend whose estimate of this young heroes character is borne out in the many testimonies, and expressions of sympathy which have been received by his parents, best show the popularity and respect he had won. His friend testifies to this being “a youth, clean and manly, unobtrusive in his daily walk of life, never a braggart, but rather one nature’s gentlemen.
This heroic soldier died at Malta on the 11th inst., and was buried in the Pieta Cemetery, a wreath being placed on his coffin, inscribed “Malta’s tribute to dead heroes, with deepest sympathy from the Malta ‘Daily Chronicle’ fund.” Heartfelt sympathy is extended to Mr. And Mrs. Robinson in their sad bereavement.
Alexander Robinson’s photograph and newspaper article by Chris Booth.