George Bennett's inscription, High Wycombe Cemetery
George Bennett 1894 - 1917
My name is George Bennett and I was born in 1894 in Marylebone and was baptised on the 1st August that same year at St Thomas, Portman Square. So strictly speaking I was a London lad. My parents were John and Mary Bennett.
My father John was born in Bloxham, Oxfordshire, and my mother, Mary Ellen nee Golding, was born in Tetbury, Gloucestershire. They were married in 1889 in the Holborn district of London. I had 2 siblings - an older brother Frank and a younger sister Ethel. My father was a butcher and I became a butcher's assistant. At the time of my death my parents were still living in London at 25 Hamilton Gardens, St Johns Wood. So it was a long time before they had any real association with the town of High Wycombe which is where my mother later died.
During the Great War I became Corporal George Bennett, service no. G/4226 of the Royal Fusiliers 4th Battalion. The 4th (City of London) Battalion, London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers) was a Volunteer unit of Britain's Territorial Army (TA) recruited from East London. During the Great War it raised four battalions, which carried out garrison duty in Malta and Egypt, served at Gallipoli and against the Senussi, and saw a great deal of action on the Western Front, notably in the Attack on the Gommecourt Salient in 1916, at Bullecourt in 1917 and, later, at Oppy Wood and Chipilly Ridge in 1918.
I was killed in action in France on the 9th April 1917 aged 23. I am remembered on the Arras Memorial, Pas de Calais, France, and on my parents' grave here in High Wycombe. My mother Mary died on July 27th 1944 aged 81 and my father John died in Vancouver on June 28th 1947, also aged 81. His body was brought back to England and he is buried here with my mother.
The Royal Fusiliers War Memorial, a monument dedicated to the almost 22,000 Royal Fusiliers who died during the First World War, stands on Holborn in the City of London.
Researched by Margaret Anderton, Flackwell Local Area History Group and Sally Scagell, Lost the Plot
