Tag Archives: Loos Memorial

Soldier Profile – Corporal George Hubert Brown

Newspaper image of WWI Soldier smiling and in uniform.
Corporal George Hubert Brown as pictured in the Surrey Mirror and County Post, November 10, 1916. 

Name & Rank: 

Corporal George Hubert Brown 

Regimental Number 

G/2218 

Birth date & Location 

 1891 

Parents 

Edward and Amanda Brown of 15 Barfields, Blechingley, Surrey, UK 

Family Profile 

In the Brown family of the small village of Blechingley, Surrey, George Hubert was the third oldest of five children.  Edward Brown worked as a house painter, an occupation taken up by George’s eldest brother, Edward Oscar.  In 1911, George was the eldest child still living at home.  He and his younger brother, Leonard, worked as gardeners.  Another brother, Clarence, was still in school and their sister Marian had moved out.   

George married Lilian Elizabeth Mayne of Stychens Lane, Blechingley, on May 29, 1915.  Prior to their marriage, she worked as a domestic servant for a local family.  Her father, William Mayne, who worked in a quarry, had served for 13 years in the British Army in India and Burma, some of that time he was with the 2nd Battalion, The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment.  After the war, Lilian got remarried in 1920 to Richard Botting, who served with the 2nd Battalion, Royal West Kents until being discharged with Trench foot in 1917.   

Service Profile  

George Hubert Brown enlisted early for the First World War, according to the Surrey newspapers after his death.  He was noted as a being intelligent and energetic and a devoted member of the Oddfellows lodge.  He held the rank of corporal but was acting sergeant when he went missing during the Battle of Loos.   It was later determined that Brown was one of the over 100 men killed from the 8th Battalion, 25-26 September 1915.

Death date & Location 

25 September 1915 in the trenches east of Vermelles, France.  Brown is memorialized on a panel of the Loos Memorial in the Dud Corner Cemetery, Loos-en-Gohelle, France.  

Link to CWGA entry 

https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/728605/GEORGE%20HUBERT%20BROWN/

Links to OA records accessed 

http://www.bletchingley.org.uk/?page_id=2840