George Beadsworth

Name	George Beadsworth
Corps	Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 10, 2/8 & 2/7 Battalions, formerly Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire  1st/7th Battalion, Private 3280
Rank	Private
Service No.	27303
Date/Place of entry	28 October 1914 Nottingham
Date of death	1970
Memorial/Grave

George Beadsworth was born in 1893 in Nottingham, third son of William Beadsworth and his wife Esther nee Tansley. For an account of the family background see the entry for his brother Harry Beadsworth.

In 1911 George was a lace threader and still living with his parents and a younger brother. In 1913 he married Annie Spencer and their first child, also baptised George, was born late in 1914 around the time he joined up. George enlisted in the 1/7 Battalion of the Nottingham and Derby Regiment on 28 October 1914 but transferred into the Royal Warwickshire regiment; his surviving records do not say when this occurred. His brother Harry joined the 1/7th the following year. George served in three of the Warwickshire regiment’s battalions. The 10th was a Kitchener New Army battalion, and the 2/8 and 2/7 were territorial battalions formed in October 1914.
George went to France on 4th September 1916, a few weeks after Harry had been killed in action at Gommecourt. All three of the above Warwickshire battalions were already on the Western Front and George’s war record does not say when he changed battalions. He was wounded in the shoulder on 18 November.

The 2/8 and 2/7 were both in the 182nd Brigade, 61st Division. The 2/8 was disbanded on 20 February 1918 and most of those soldiers remaining transferred into the 2/7, so George may have been among them. The Division had been heavily involved in the 1918 Battles along the Somme, and was again under fire when the German Army began the second phase of its Spring Offensive near Bethune in April.

The 10th battalion was in the 57th Brigade, 19th Division and was on the western Front from July 1915. In 1918 it took part in many significant battles along the Somme including St Quentin and Bapaume, the Battles of the Lys and the Aisne, and the final advance on Picardy.

George was wounded for the second time when hit by a gas shell on 24 July 1918 and for a third time on 11 August 1918.  He was discharged from military service in 1919.  He and Annie had two more children, William H towards the end of 1920, and Thomas W born in 1922. He died in 1970, and Annie in 1971.