George William Reeve

A Lance Sergeant with 25th Bomb Disposal Company, George died on 22nd of September 1944 aged 29. 

George was born at Lowestoft on 9 January 1915, a son of John Henry and Emily Reeve. In 1921 his family lived at 17 Coronation Terrace, Fir Lane. 

On 2 May 1936 George married Hilda Annie Williams at Saint Margaret’s Church. George was a bricklayer living at 17 Fir Lane and Hilda a hairdresser living at 125 Saint Peter’s Street. In 1939 they lived at Green Gates, Somerleyton Road. During the war Hilda lived with her parents at 28 Saint Margaret’s Road, and later she moved to 82 Chapelfield Road, Norwich. 

George enlisted in the Royal Engineers, at Ipswich, on 9 January 1940 and was sent to the Construction Centre at Clacton. He was posted to 678 Construction Company and served with the British Expeditionary Force, in France, from 2 February 1940, George would have been evacuated, possibly as part of the Dunkirk evacuation.

On 3 May 1941 he was posted to 109 Bomb Disposal Section, and he joined 27 Bomb Disposal Company on 6 May 1942. He served with 1 Bomb Disposal Group from 13 August 1943 and 25 Bomb Disposal Company from 14 September 1943. From 1941 to 1943 George was serving with units based in Northern Ireland.  

George embarked for France, with 25 Bomb Disposal Company, on 9 August 1944 and disembarked on 13 August. 
On 22 September George, and two other men from his unit, were killed in an ‘explosive accident’. A Board of Inquiry concluded that none of the men were to blame for the accident. 

George’s father-in-law, John Williams, died in 1940 in the loss of the trawler Lord Haldane.