Cyril George
Crick
30th November 1896 - 27th August 1917
Cyril was born on 30th November 1896 to George Alfred Slack
Crick, a Peterborough corn merchant and his wife Jessica of
Springfield, Thorpe Road, Peterborough, a large house
opposite today's District Hospital. He was the youngest of
three children, with an elder brother Leslie and a sister
Mary. Cyril first went to school at Miss Exley’s, then
entered The King’s School aged 9, on the 19 January 1905.
He left King’s on the 31 September 1912 (aged 16), moving
on to Gresham’s School at Holt in Norfolk.
In 1913 Cyril left Gresham's (aged 17) to enter his
father's business. He was granted a commission in the
Huntingdonshire Cyclists' Battalion on 5th May 1915 and one
year later was attached to the Worcestershire Regiment. On
27th August 1917 he was killed in action leading his
platoon in the Ypres Salient. In a letter his Commanding
Officer, Colonel Leonard Billen, wrote " Courageously
leading, he tried to get them forward under heavy machine
gun fire. He was always ready to do anything for his men,
his death was a brave one and he died instantly." His body
was never found and he is commemorated on the memorial
walls of Tyne Cot Cemetery, Passchendaele, Belgium.
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