2nd Lieutenant John Robert Williamson HOBSON (118298)
Royal Army Service Corps

Date of birth: 13th November 1913
Date of death: 14th May 1940

Killed in action aged 26
Buried at Avesnes-Le-Comte Communal Cemetery Extension Plot 2 Row D Grave 13
He was born on the 14th of November 1913 the son of Robert John Hobson and Dorothy Isabel (nee Lewis) of 37 Sherbourne Place, Leamington Spa.

He was educated at Greyfriars, Beech Lawn School, Leamington Spa and at the King’s School Canterbury from September 1927 to December 1930 where he was in School House and was a Senior Scholar.

On leaving school he trained as a chartered accountant and became an Associate Chartered Accountant.

On the 22nd of April 1939 he was married to Phyllis Margaret (nee Lewis). It is thought they met in Leamington Spa through their shared interest in the Loft Theatre there. They lived at “Ashbourne”, The Grove, Cliffs End, Ramsgate.

Following the outbreak of war he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps on the 28th of February 1940. He proceeded to France where he joined the British Expeditionary Force and was stationed at Arras.

The Germans invaded France on the 10th of May 1940. They knew that senior British officers were often billeted in hotels, and on the 14th of May they sent a force of bombers to Arras to target the Hotel L'Univers where John Hobson was staying. During this raid bombs struck the hotel and others fell on adjoining houses, destroying or damaging fifteen of them.
The two bombs which fell on the hotel partially destroyed it, killing John Hobson, Major William Scott DSO MC, Royal Irish Fusiliers and seriously wounding King's Messenger Brigadier Sir Mainwaring Ravell Walsh CB CMG MC, General Staff, Worcestershire Regiment, who died of his injuries the following day.

By 1945 Phyllis Margaret Hobson was working with ENSA, entertaining the troops in the Middle East. There she met Chief Engineer, Malta Command, Colonel Charles George William Stacpoole Heaton-Armstrong and they married on the 2nd of March 1945.

John Hobson is buried next to Brigadier Walsh and Major Scott and is commemorated on the war memorial at Holy Trinity Church, Leamington Spa.
School House

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