George Oliver Reynolds. Died 28th August 1918
The Memorial uses George’s middle name of Oliver. George was born in 1899 in Wokingham, Berkshire to his teenage mother, Martha . He was the first born and had just one sibling, a sister named Nellie. By the age of 12 in the 1911 Census, George is still a scholar. He lived with his mother and widowed Grandmother, Mary Ann in Mount Pleasant at the time of the war and some years before. When only 2 years old, he was living with the same family group, with the addition of an uncle who was described as a ‘scavenger’ as his line of work.
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Both his mother and grandmother were laundresses and show’s us that Wokingham at that time was a hard place to earn a living. We do not know much of the family’s earlier life, but can imagine how difficult it was to survive, having lost the father and therefore the main bread winner. George was only 29 when he died in 1879 and left behind a wife with three children under 6 years old. That Mary Ann did not end up in the Workhouse (located a few hundred yards away) is a credit to her tenacity and hard work.
Photo by S Huxford 2011
George joined the Somerset Light Infantry 1st Battalion probably after 1916. The 1st was a regular battalion and George is likely to have been used as a ‘top up’ after the losses in the regulars started to mount up. He was soon on his way to France. Only a matter of weeks before the end of hostilities in 1918 he had been killed on the 28th of August and his name is given in the Vis En Artois Memorial in Picardy. This Memorial bears the names of over 9,000 men who fell in the period from 8 August 1918 to the date of the Armistice in the Advance to Victory in Picardy and Artois, between the Somme and Loos, and who have no known grave. George Oliver Reynolds was only 19 when he died.
Name: REYNOLDS, GEORGE OLIVER
Initials: G O
Nationality: United Kingdom
Rank: Private
Regiment/Service: Somerset Light Infantry
Unit Text: 1st Bn.
Age: 19
Date of Death: 30/08/1918
Service No: 40138
Additional information: Son of Mrs. Martha Rebecca Reynolds, of 12, Mount Pleasant, Wokingham, Berks.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Panel 4.
Memorial: VIS-EN-ARTOIS MEMORIAL
12 Mount Pleasant, Wokingham, Berkshire