While I was researching the First World War and specifically, the three service men – one from Wickford, Essex, England, one from Meaux, France and one from Heiligenhaus, Germany, I wondered how it must have felt at the beginning of the war when no one envisaged how long the fighting would last, nor how devastating new warfare would be.  I imagined that young men thought their hopes and dreams were just on hold for a short while, never dreaming the horrors they would witness and the danger they would encounter.

Here is the story of the soldier from Wickford, George Burnett, as told in the script of ‘Sons of Three Countries Remembered’.

George Burnett rejoined the First Battalion Coldstream Guards as Lance Corporal 7591 at the outbreak of war in August 1914. The battalion was not seriously engaged until a month later when they came under continuous artillery fire, sustaining heavy losses near the Marne. The desperate situation was further aggravated by lack of ammunition because about thirty percent of the cartridges issued to the battalion were too large for the soldiers’ weapons. Burnett next saw action on the 21st October during the first Battle of Ypres. Throughout the following eight days, the fighting was intense and on 29th October, George Burnett was reported as missing in action. When darkness fell that evening, only eighty men of the First Battalion Coldstream Guards remained alive. Following the death of Burnett’s mother in October, relatives tried to locate him, contacting his commanding officer and the War Office, but there was no news. On the 12th December 1918, the Southend Standard reported the following: “The sad news has also reached Wickford that PC George Burnett, who was stationed at Wickford for three years before the war, was killed in action in France on October 29th 1914. He, with others, joined up soon after the outbreak and was at first reported missing and for over two years nothing further was heard until just recently. He was much esteemed in Wickford. During his stay he was connected to the Wickford Cricket Club.”
Burnett’s body was never identified but he is remembered with honour on the British Memorial on the Menin Gate, as well as locally in the Second World War Memorial Park in Wickford and the Downham Memorial outside St. Margaret’s Church, thanks to efforts of the Wickford War Memorial Association.
Lance Corporal George Burnett was twenty-three years old when he was killed.

Let us never forget.