Richard Nynian Irwin
Memorial: Olveston
Regiment: Gloucestershire Regiment
Medals: 1914–15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
Rank and number: Lieutenant
Parents: Dr Stewart and Ethel Irwin
Home address: The Green, Olveston, Bristol
Date of birth: 03/02/1898
Date of death: 06/03/1917
Buried/Commemorated at: Karasouli Military Cemetery (C. 565.), Greece
Age: 19
Further information:
Dr Stewart Irwin with his wife Ethel lived on the Green at Olveston where their four children were born. The eldest was John, who served in the Great War and returned to the village and became engaged to Doris Machin of Pershore in August 1919 shortly before the general medical partnership of Drs Irwin and MacWatters of Almondsbury was dissolved. Richard was John’s younger brother born on the 3rd of February 1898 and there then followed Ethel and finally Molly, born in 1900. Despite the death of Molly in 1915, Mrs Irwin took a leading role in raising funds for the Red Cross and the Olveston War Fund to relieve the suffering of civilians and allied soldiers. Typically in 1916 the Olveston contribution to the Serbian Relief Fund was in recognition of the great Serbian Retreat across the inhospitable snows of Albania and Montenegro; which event, it was reported in The Times, ‘will live in history as one of the most terrible incidents of the war. Those civilians who have survived its privations are without resources and the sufferings of the Serbian Army have been no less terrible'
Richard, at the age of 16 and a half, joined the army in the month that war was declared. He was commissioned into the 9th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment and went to Selonika in November 1915. By early 1917 the Battalion was in the Doiran Sector on the Greece/Macedonia border confronting Austrian troops on Horseshoe Hill. At 0230 on March 6th the British raiding party, with a section under the command of Capt. Ashmead with Lt. Richard Irwin and 15 other ranks, cut through the wire only to discover an enemy force of some 300 advancing from Krastali. As there was a danger of being surrounded, Capt. Ashmead gave the order to withdraw. Supporting artillery fire from our lines prevented the enemy from charging the raiding party and most of the group was successful in regaining the safety of our trenches. Lieut. Irwin was killed by machine gun fire while getting his men back through the wire where four of his men also died. At the age of nineteen, Richard Irwin was buried at Karasouli Military Cemetery some 35 miles north-west of Thessaloniki, Greece
By kind permission, this information is based on the following source(s):
Forces War Records and CWGC