Rfn Edmund Walter Crow

Edmund was born in 1898, the son of Edmund and Florence Crow. His father was a nurseryman and Edmund had grown up in the cottage on the nursery grounds. As a boy he had spent many years a member of the church choir. He married a local girl called Gertrude Tiffen in 1912.

He was called up to fight during the first world war and was in France by 1917. He was seconded to the Medical Corps in September 1917, and in this role received a certificate for galantry while tending the wounded under heavy shell fire - he was only 19 at the time.

Over Christmas 1917 he was on the front line at Ypres, where he took part in a brief Christmas Day truce with German troops.

He returned to Brentwood, married, and moved to Park Road, working as a civil servant. He was a part of the home guard during the second world war.

He only moved out of Brentwood at the very end of his life, when he moved to a residential home in Devon at the age of 99, closer to his extended family. He died three years later in 2000.