MY WAR DEAD
Edward Brown was born in Soham, Cambridgeshire, on 2nd February 1893, being the second son of George Brown, a carpenter and joiner, and his wife who was born Sophia Palmer. Before the First World War, Edward was apprenticed to a house painter and was recorded as such at the time of the 1911 census. He married Daisy Isabel Jones in Islington in December 1913, she being a native of Bath in Somerset. Daisy's father was a Francis England Jones, a butcher, of 4 Bedford Street, Walcot, Bath. The couple had a son, Francis George, born in Soham in May 1914 but sadly dying only a few months later in Bath.
Details of Edward's war service are currently unclear but family knowledge is that he died in the First World War. A medal roll record states that he first saw active service in France on 10th September 1915 and was entitled to the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal.
Edward served with the Royal Engineers and achieved the rank of Lance Corporal with the 82nd Field Company. He was reported to have been killed in action on 20th September 1917, aged 24, during the 3rd Battle of Ypres. The database of 'UK soldiers who died in the Great War' states that he had been born in Cambridge and had enlisted in Bath; the C.W.G.C. records that Edward Brown is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial (Addenda Panel) in Belgium, indicating that his body was either not recovered or, if recovered, was not identified.
The War Memorial in Soham carries an entry for Lance Corporal Edward Brown who was possibly a native of the town; my researches show that there is no doubt as to his origins and that he was, indeed, the man described here.
Edward Brown left an informal 'Soldier's Will', dated 18th July 1917, in which he left all of his property and effects to his wife, named as Mrs E Brown of 4 Bedford Street, Walcot, Bath. She subsequently married a William Leach in Birmingham in 1921 and probably died in Bath in 1982.
Edward Brown was the brother of Alfred Frederick Brown and my 2nd cousin, twice removed.
BROWN, Edward - died 20th September 1917.