George Crawley was born in Boxmoor, Herts on Monday, 1st June 1891 the eighth child born to Daniel Crawley and Annie Birch. Daniel and Annie had a total of eleven children who were; Annie Elizabeth, Alice Mary, Herbert William, Daniel, Florence Louisa, Percy Dean, Alfred, Lily, George, Montague and Harold. Lily died in infancy in 1889 and Alfred died in 1902 aged sixteen. George’s brother Montague fought and died in the Great War in September 1918 and his biography also appears in this book.

The Crawley family lived at 9 Cowper Road in Boxmoor for more than fifty years and when George was born his father was working at Foster’s Saw Mills on Kingsland Road.

In 1901 George was at Boxmoor JMI School where he successfully complete five of the six Standards expected before leaving in June 1904 to start work with Dickinson & Co. Limited at Apsley Mills. He worked at Dickinsons for only a couple of years before moving to Islington in London to start work in the Drapery trade.

By 1911 he was boarding at the home of Frederick Taylor on Shepperton Road, Islington and working as a Packer in a Drapery store. It was here that he met his wife Isabella Green, Frederick Taylor’s niece who was also living at her Uncle’s house. George and Isabella were married at St Saviour’s Church, Hoxton in London on Sunday, 26th May 1912 in a ceremony witnessed by George’s youngest brother Harold and Isabella’s sister, Elizabeth.  George and Isabella had one child, a son named Alfred Montague born in Hemel Hempstead on the 4th July 1914 just two months before the war broke out.

George enlisted with the Devonshire Regiment attesting in London in August 1914 and was then posted to the 9th (Service) Battalion at Rushmore, near Aldershot for his basic training. The Battalion went to France in 1915 and disembarked in Le Havre on the 28th July as part of the 20th Brigade in the 7th Division.

George saw action at the Battle of Loos in September 1915 before moving with the 9th Battalion to Fricourt near Albert where he celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday in the trenches. Towards the end of June 1916, the Battalion prepared for an assault on the German positions in what was the Battle of Albert. As the first phase of the Battle of the Somme, Albert proved to be particularly bloody and the British suffered over 80,000 casualties over the first thirteen days of July.

George was a casualty on the first day when he was Killed in Action during the initial advance on Saturday, 1st July 1916.

His death was reported in the Hemel Gazette when a letter to his parents from the Battalion Chaplain was published in August.    

George is Remembered with Honour in Devonshire Cemetery, Mametz, Somme, France, where he is interred in Plot A. 4.

He was 25 years old when he died. George was eligible for the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.