Dawlish World War One Project

It is recorded that Edward Doble enlisted at Newton Abbot, but there are no indications as to the date.
There were a number of Divisions engaged in Mesopotamia and there will have been Royal Field Artillery detachments with them.
Following the withdrawal from Gallipoli in January 1916 there was further bad news with the siege of Kut, which had become a major concern for the armies fighting the Ottoman army. They had been advancing up from Basra to protect the oil fields and met Turkish forces acting with German advisers. The British garrison at Kut were encircled and in a state of siege for five months before starvation forced their surrender. After five rescue attempts in which relief forces lost 20,000 men the British garrison surrendered and 13,000 men marched out of Kut to imprisonment.

Basra was an important logistical base at which ships unloaded supplies to be sent north on shallow draught vessels. New hospitals were also set up to better care for the sick and wounded. Gunner Edward Doble died at the 33rd British General Hospital of heatstroke.

Edward Doble was from a family long established in Withycombe Raleigh, next to Exmouth and within the registration district of St Thomas. It was his marriage which brought him across the Exe to Dawlish.
His grandfather was Robert Doble, (1815- Q2,1857) a brickmaker, living in Withycombe with his wife, Agnes nee Burgoin, (1815-Q4, 1882) and seven children in 1851.
His father, James T B Doble was born in St Thomas Q4, 1844 and married Rebecca Cox (1840-1879) of Wool, Dorset, in St Thomas registration district in Q4 1864, and by 1871 they had three children, Stephen Robert James Cox Doble (1863-), Agnes Charlotte (1867- ), and William (1870- ) and were living at 6 Perriman Row, Withycombe.

James is shown as a Brick Moulder. By 1891 James T B Doble is with a new wife, Elizabeth, 34, living at 6 Jubilee Cottages, Withycombe. James and Elizabeth had four children, Edward (1888-1916), Walter (1890- ), Sidney (1893- ) and Wallace (1894-1918).

Edward became a road contractor's labourer and after his mother's death in 1906 he married Alice Maud Way (1883- ) in Q3, 1907. She had been born in Cockermouth, Cumberland. She is recorded in the 1891 census, living with her aunt Bessie Way, and in 1901 as a servant to Mark Cornelius' household at Marine Parade, Dawlish.
There were two children by 1911 when they were living at 2 Alma Cottages, Manor Hill, Dawlish. (They had four children but two had died by the 1911 census.) They were Francis Edward James Doble (1908- 1940), George Doble (1910 - ). A further child, Albert Frederick W Doble (1912- 1983) was born after the census. All were born in Dawlish.