Name
George Young Lewis
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
05/12/1918
30
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Sapper
5770
Australian Tunnelling Corps
2nd Company
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
NIEDERZWEHREN CEMETERY, KASSEL
II. G. 8.
Germany
Headstone Inscription
Without you we can do nothing we three till we meet again
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Town Memorial, St Mary's Church Roll of Honour (Book), Hitchin, British Boys' School Memorial, Hitchin
Pre War
George was born in October 1887 in Hitchin, son of Samuel Young Lewis and Selina G Lewis whose home was at 8, Verulam Road, Hitchin. He attended Hitchin British Boys' School.
He emigrated to Tasmania where he lived for eleven years and was in business with his father-in-law as a nurseryman, having previously been employed as a chauffeur. He was married to Mrs Ivy C.R. Lewis of Sulphur Creek Tasmania and they had one child.
Wartime Service
He joined the Australian Army in Tasmania on the 29th March 1916 and embarked at Melbourne on the ‘Ulysses’ on the 25th October 1916, disembarking at Plymouth.
George was in the 2nd Australian Tunnelling Company and his Regimental Number was 5770. In June 1917 the Company commenced the construction of subways from front to support lines and dugouts towards the Great Dune at Nieuport. All this in sand. On the 10th July 1917 the Germans bombarded the sector with 42cm guns and in the evening their infantry attacked and found a party of tunnellers sheltering in a subway. They dropped grenades down the ventilation shaft and used flame-throwers down the entrance. George Lewis was one of those captured. He was taken prisoner at Nieuport on the 10th July 1917 and was put to work on a farm near the Lechfeld prison camp. It was here that he was taken ill and he died from influenza (Spanish grippe) whilst still at the prisoner of war camp.
He was buried in Grave 182, Schwabstadel, Lechfeld in Germany, but in 1924 his remains were re-interred in Niederzwehren Cemetery in Plot 2, Row G, Grave 8 in Cassel in Germany.
Additional Information
A private inscription on the headstone reads:- "Without you we can do nothing we three till we meet again". His effects, consisting of a watch, letters, photographs, Marks 6.37 in notes and coins and a razor were received by his widow in May and August 19
Acknowledgments
Adrian Dunne, David C Baines, Jonty Wild
