We will remember them, November 1916
After five months, the Battle of the Somme came to an end in November 1916 – but not before it had claimed the life of one more man from Alderley Edge. The 9th Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment, in which Private Darroll Davies served, was engaged in the Battle of Ancre, the last phase of the Battle of the Somme. He died on 21st November, aged 21.
His body was never found and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial. His parents, David and Henrietta, lived on Heyes Lane, having moved to Alderley Edge from Rhuddlan, where they are recorded in the 1911 census. Darroll was a gardener and when he enlisted in November 1915 he was living and working in Stockport. His service record tells us that he was posted to the front on 5th November and was killed in action just 16 days later.
One other Alderley Edge man died in November, a man from the other end of the social scale. Captain Theodore Wright Crewdson was the son of John Crewdson, cotton manufacturer, and great-grandson of Anna Crewdson, who moved to Ashfield House (now the Edge Hotel) around 1850. The Crewdsons were one of the most prominent families in Alderley Edge. Two of Theodore’s great-aunts were VADs, working at the Brookdale Military Hospital; one of them was briefly commandant shortly before the hospital closed.
Theodore was educated at Wellington College and went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1914. He volunteered immediately after matriculating and was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the 20th Battalion, Manchester Regiment (the Manchester Pals) on 30th November 1914.
Although this battalion was engaged in the Battle of the Somme, Captain Crewdson appears to have been seconded as an aide-de-camp to the Ypres salient, as he died of wounds received at Ploegsteert on 28th October 1916. He was taken to a hospital in Boulogne where he died on 11th November.
If you know of Alderley Edge men who served in the war and returned home afterwards, we should be glad to hear of them.
B
Brookdale Hospital March 23rd 1916.