Edwin John Curle was born on in Camberwell, Middlesex on Saturday, 13th October 1894. He was the fourth child born to Arthur John Curle and Eliza Grover and he had five siblings who were: Maggie Elizabeth, Edith Marion, Richard Henry, Charles William and Dorothy Ellen. His younger brother, Charles was ‘Killed in Action’ on the 30th November 1917. Charles was also a Lance Corporal and he served with the 1st/6th (City of London) Battalion (Rifles), London Regiment. He was 21 years old when he was killed and was commemorated on the Kings Langley War Memorial. At the time of Edwin’s death his older brother Richard was also serving in France and he was the only one of the three Curle boys to survive the conflict.

Edwin and his older brother Richard went to Immanuel Church of England Primary School on Streatham Common, both starting on the 20th September 1901. This was a ‘church’ school attached to the Immanuel and St Andrew’s Church just off Streatham High Street. It was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott who build, amongst other iconic buildings, St Pancras Station and the Albert Memorial. The school still exists today.

Edwin and Richard left within a couple of weeks of each other in June 1906 when the family moved to Kings Langley in Hertfordshire. Edwin’s father Arthur was an ‘Engineer’s Labourer’ and it was this work which brought him with his family to Kings Langley when he took up a job as a ‘Furnace Stoker’ in Leavesden Asylum. The family lived on Primrose Hill in Kings Langley and on leaving school, Edwin joined John Dickinson & Co Limited at Home Park Mills.

A year later in 1907, he left Dickinsons to join G.B. Kent and Sons Limited in its Frogmore factory where he worked for seven years, during which time he earned the reputation as a goalkeeper turning out mainly for the factory team. Both he and his older brother Richard also played in the successful Kings Langley team between 1910 and 1914. 

He left Kents in 1914 when he joined the Metropolitan Police on the 14th December 1914 as PC 104544 based in Bow where he served for the next two years. At the end of 1916, the Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police gave permission for the release of several hundred serving officers so that they could enlist for overseas service. Edwin was one of the men who took the opportunity and, on the 13th January 1917, he attested at Poplar in Middlesex and enlisted with the 1st Battalion Hertfordshire Regiment. He was transferred not long afterwards to the 6th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment.

Events were moving quickly for Edwin and only a month after enlisting on the 10th February, he was married to Ethel Sanger Anderson at St Mary’s Church in Apsley End. A report of the ceremony appeared in the Hemel Gazette a week later. The young couple were married by the Revd. James Herbert Reginald Lendrum who would be killed by a shell in August 1918 whilst conducting a burial service as an Army Chaplain at the Front.

Edwin returned to his Regiment almost immediately after his wedding and within a matter of weeks he was sent to France disembarking there on the 23rd March 1917. Within days he was in action in the First Battle of the Scarpe and two weeks later fought in the Second Battle of the Scarpe. With little respite he was in action again as the 6th Bedfordshires fought in the Battle of Arleux on the 28th April which was particularly costly in terms of casualties.

By the 19th May Edwin was back in the trenches and three days later the Battalion War Diary records the following: “22 May 1917 Very heavy shelling by hostile artillery towards evening, followed by gas shell bombardment at night. Casualties 7 killed & 14 wounded.” Edwin was one of the seven men killed and his obituary confirmed that it was due to one of the enemy gas shells. He died on Tuesday, 22nd May 1917.

His obituary was published in the Hemel Gazette in the month following his death.

Edwin was also commemorated at a Memorial Service in Westminster Abbey, on Saturday, 17th May 1919 for the Metropolitan policemen who had fallen in the Great War. His name is also recorded in a ‘Roll of Honour’ which is on permanent display in the Abbey.

He was also commemorated on a memorial at Forest Gate in London to the men of ‘K’ Division, Metropolitan Police who gave their lives in the Great War.

Edwin is Remembered with Honour in the Tank Cemetery, Guemappe, Pas de Calais, France on a Special Memorial A. 45. ‘Buried near this spot’. The inscription on the memorial reads: “THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT”.

He was 22 years old when he died.

Edwin was entitled to the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.