Service number: 34736 | Rank: Private | Regiment: Essex Regiment. Formerly Norfolk Regiment (24290)
Killed in action, March 6, 1917 , in Flanders. Aged 22.
Buried at ETAPLES MILITARY CEMETERY, Pas de Calais, France.
Son of Richard and Emma Parrott, Station Road, Framlingham.
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT ROWLAND …
Brandon’s War Memorial uses the spelling of ‘Rowland’, but it is spelled as ‘Roland’ throughout the Census Returns and other research, and so it is the latter that I will use. Roland was born in Barnham, Suffolk, and was the second son of Richard, a plumber from London, and Emma from Watton. Roland’s family were not the type to stay put for too long and in 1901, when Roland was six years old, they were living in Mildenhall. Ten years later, according to the 1911 census, they were in the Sudbury/Colchester area. At this time Roland was sixteen years old and working in a grocer shop. The census shows he was living with his mother but his father and his older brother, Alfred, were boarding in Ipswich.
It appears that Roland was living in Brandon at the time he enlisted to fight because he enlisted in the town. He was put into the Norfolk Regiment and allocated the service number of 24290, and listed his next of kin as both his parents, who were living in Station Road, Framlingham, Suffolk. At some point in the war he was transferred to the Essex Regiment, possibly a result of returning to active service after recovering from being wounded and then being reallocated to another regiment on his return to the front. Roland died of broncho-pneumonia while in a French hospital in Cambiers and whether this was a complication of being wounded or otherwise we may never know. He was 22 years old.
By enlisting at Brandon, Roland seems to have secured his place on the town’s memorial and it is not known whether he or his family had settled in the town by that time. Perhaps he had a loved one living in the town? This may explain the incorrect spelling of his name on the memorial when it was erected in 1920. However what is known is that his parents did settle in the town eventually, living along London Road, and saw out the rest of their lives as Brandon residents.