Sergeant's stripes; Black RIR button (gutta percha maybe?); Soldier's Pay Book; Two RIR cap badges; Two RIR badges; 2 War medals; Photograph
My grandfather, Robert Lyndhurst Beatty, was born on the HMS Lyndhurst March 30 1900 in the Delaware Breakwater near Philadelphia, PA. His father, Bob Beatty, was captain of the Lyndhurst. Captain Bob Beatty died at sea when my grandfather was about six months old and he was raised in Belfast by his mother Elizabeth Barrington Beatty (d. 5 Jan 1951 and is buried in Belfast) and his aunt (Margaret Stephenson Meeke who died and is buried in Babson Park, Florida). According to family lore, Bob began trying to enlist at age 14 as soon as the war started and each time (3-4 times by the stories I was told), a family member reported him for being underage. At age 15 he told his mother, I'm going to enlist and if anyone stops me I'm going to England to enlist and if I die you will never know.\n He served in the Royal Irish Rifles in the Great War attaining the rank of Sergeant. His regimental number is 20238 and he served in Company A in the 3rd Battalion of the RIR (according to his Soldier's Pay Book that was passed down to me). His name is inadvertently spelled Beattie in that book. According to the same book, he was in Group No. 13, Code No.(?) 353 and was a Linen Finisher before the war. The book also has him listed in the 5th Royal Irish Rifles and has two postwar dates in it, Feb 17 1919 and Feb 19 1920 (incidentally, the latter date is 60 years to the day of his death, and 61 years to the day of my birth). Again according to the stories passed down in the family, he served on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic after the war, and was berated by old women for being an Irishman serving in the King's army. While his pay book is pretty empty overall, he's listed as a Corporal but at some point he achieved the rank of Sergeant. An envelope I have addressed to him that has a faint 1919 postmark lists him as 20238 Sgt. Robert Beatty, 25 Eglantine Avenue, Belfast. Granddaddy Bob left Ireland in 1929 and came to America as a citizen, having been born in American waters in 1900. He met and married my grandmother Anne Elizabeth Zernow in New York City. They married in the early 1930s and settled in Babson Park, Florida where they owned a chicken farm and raised my father Robert Patrick Beatty (retired USN Commander) and Michael Barrington Beatty. When WWII broke out, Bob tried to enlist several times but according to my dad, the US Army wanted to make him a buck private. Given the fact he was a combat veteran from WWI and a former sergeant, Bob demurred. He did spend time building ships in Tampa. Dad also told me he'd go to the airbase where RAF pilots were training and invite Irishmen to the farm for the weekend of R&R. Bob died on February 19, 1970 and is buried in Babson Park, Florida. Because he was an only child whose father died when he was an infant, we know very little about the Beatty family. He came to the US in 1929 and never returned to Ireland. We also know very little about his First World War service or experiences.