Cyril George Crick
30th November 1896 - 27th August 1917

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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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