George Thomas Diamond Davis

Rank 
Private
Regiment 
London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers)
Date of death 
7 August 1916
Age of death 
19
Cemetery / Memorial 
France
Biography 

George was the eldest son of George Davis, a builder/general labourer who was born in Wanstead in 1860. George’s mother, Martha, had come from a farming family in Buckinghamshire before working as a domestic servant for a family in Leytonstone.

George Senior was a bricklayer as was his father before him, who had been born in Wanstead, in 1833. By 1901 the family were living in 6 Cowley Road, Wanstead with their five surviving children.

George T.D. Davis enlisted into the 1/3rd (City of London) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers at the beginning of 1915. Like many of those who volunteered in 1915, George took part in the Battle of the Somme, which was launched on 1st July 1916. On 7th August, George was one of two men from his battalion killed in action on the front line – he was 19 years old.

George was buried in a battlefield burial site and after the war his body was exhumed and re–buried at the Delville Wood Cemetery, Longueval in France.

At the foot of George’s gravestone is the phrase “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide”. This was a personal dedication arranged by George’s sister, Florence, who after the war was living at 9 Cotters Cottages, Nightingale Lane, Wanstead. It is the first line of the Christian Lutheran hymn which was very popular in the First World War trenches and is still sung at funerals today.

 Research by Wanstead United Reformed Church

Sources:

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Ancestry.com