On this day in 1917, George Henry Stevens (1881-1917) was killed in the Battle of Arras in France in the Great War.
George was a lance-corporal in the 4th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers when he lost his life on May 3, 1917.
He was listed as ‘missing in action’ in a Roll of Honour published in The Western Times on June 23, 1917. His body was never found.
George served in the Army Service Corps before joining the 12th and then the 4th Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers. He served in France from May 9, 1916.
He is remembered on the Arras Memorial which commemorates almost 35,000 men from the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand who died in the Arras region between 1916 and 1918 and have no known grave.
Paul Roberts
NOTES
George married Mary Ellen Quant (1878-1949) in 1901 in Tiverton. May was the daughter of John Henry Quant (1850-1881) and Sarah Chown (1851-1921). Sarah was the daughter of Elizabeth Squire (1810-1899) and William Chown (1805-1879). Elizabeth was the sister of Charlotte Squire (1820-1901). Charlotte was the mother of Sarah Tancock (1851-1900), who married Daniel Arscott (1857- 1922) on October 17, 1877 at Tristram Chapel, Puddington. Daniel was my great-grandfather.
George, born in 1881 in Withleigh, Tiverton, was the son of Henry and Mary Jane Stevens, who for many years lived in Castle Steet, Tiverton. George was a carter for the Great Western Railway before he went to war. His wife, born on March 14, 1878 in Templeton, married Eli Baker (1890-1976) in 1921 in Tiverton. She died in 1949 in Tiverton, aged 71.
Picture below
Arras Memorial, on which George is remembered, and Fauberg-D’Amiens Cemetery. Photographed on September 7, 2010 by Carcharoth (Commons) – CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arras_Memorial_and_Fauberg-D%27Amiens_Cemetery_14.JPG
