More about Robert Prentice Innes

Robert Prentice Innes was born in Perthshire on 24 August 1895, the son of James Innes and his wife Jessie Scobie Smith Innes. In April 1912, when he was 16 years old, he went to work for The Royal Bank of Scotland as an apprentice at its Dundee Murraygate branch.

Outside work Innes was a territorial soldier, a member from 1912 of the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry. He was mobilised on the outbreak of war in 1914, leaving the bank to go on active service. He served in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine, and was wounded in 1917. In August 1917 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment). He was killed in action in France on 21 September 1918. He was 23 years old.

His commanding officer later wrote, ‘The country can ill afford to lose such men. He cannot be replaced. Since joining this battalion he has shown himself to be a soldier of high courage and ability, at all times ready to do his duty – and he laid down his life on this duty.’

Another officer, in a letter to his father, wrote: “Your son met his death defending a position which he had orders to defend to the last. We had hopes when he was missing that he would be a prisoner, but we felt that he was too brave a fellow to surrender without a fight. Such has turned out to be the case.”