M/11585(CH) Chief Petty Officer Edmund George Millard, Acting Engine Room Artificer 4th Class, HMS Pembroke, Royal Navy
Edmund George Millard (sometimes George Edmund to distinguish him from his father) was born in the winter of 1896, and baptised in St Mary’s Church on 10 April 1896. He was the son of Edmund Millard of Stogursey, a smith, and later an engineer, and Annie Jane Millard. In 1911 they lived at Bath Bridge, 98 Bath Road, Bridgwater, and that year George had four sisters and two brothers. Edmund senior seems to have run a successful foundry and scrapworks, although was fined in 1906 for causing an explosion in his works, when he used too much explosive to break apart some scrap iron. A passing girl, who’s surname was Stuckey, was knocked off her bike by fragments of shrapnel. Edmund junior joined his father’s trade when he was old enough.
Edmund enlisted in the Royal Navy on 5 January 1915, lying about his age, giving his date of birth as 18 March 1892. His occupation was recorded as a fitter and turner. He was 5’11” tall, with black hair and brown eyes. He served with the shore-based establishment HMS Pembroke II, which was at RNAS Eastchurch in Sheppey, Kent from January to March 1915. He was then transferred to the brand-new destroyer, HMS Mentor, which was sent to be part of Harwich Force, a fleet of smaller ships that patrolled the English Channel.
The Mentor was mostly deployed as an escort ship. In July 1915 she escorted the ocean liner Empress of Britain, which had been pressed into service as a troop ship, destined for Gallipoli. In August the Mentor had its bow blown away by a torpedo, when Harwick Force encountered a similar sized German squadron of small ships. The damaged vessel was towed back to port. From December, Edmund returned to Pembroke II. On 12 April 1916 he was invalided out of the navy, on account of contracting tuberculosis. The continually damp conditions at sea would not have assisted this condition of the lungs. He died of phthisis, pulmonary tuberculosis, in Britain on 26 January 1918. He was aged 21. At the time he died his mother was living in The Lindens, Wembdon Road. He was buried in the Wembdon Road Cemetery, his parents including ‘served his country in the Great War’ upon the inscription
More can be read about the HMS Pembroke here.
