George Edward Hill

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Grave/Memorial:  		Hill, George E

11 July 1899, Knaphill, Woking

Charles and Louisa (née Bush)

7th Battalion The Queen's (Royal West Surrey) Regiment

G.68544

Lance Corporal

19 October 1918, France, age 19

Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery, Villers-Bretonneux, Departement de la Somme, Picardie, France: XVII. AA. 8 		   

Biography:
George Edward Hill was born on 11 July 1899, in Knaphill, Woking. He was the son and eldest child of Charles Henry William,
a cowman, and Louisa Anna (née Bush). He had a brother and three sisters.

George served with 7th Battalion, The Queen's (Royal West Surrey) Regiment. At the beginning of October 1917, 7th Battalion
was relieved and pulled back.

George Edward Hill died of bronchial pneumonia on 19 October 1918. He is buried, in grave XVII. AA. 8, within the Villers-
Bretonneux Military Cemetery, Villers-Bretonneux, Departement de la Somme, France



Villers-Bretonneux became famous in 1918, when the German advance on Amiens ended in the capture of the village by their tanks and infantry on 23 April.
On the following day, the 4th and 5th Australian Divisions, with units of the 8th and 18th Divisions, recaptured the whole of the village and on 8 August 1918,
the 2nd and 5th Australian Divisions advanced from its eastern outskirts in the Battle of Amiens.

Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, was
made after the Armistice when graves were brought in from other burial
grounds in the area and from the battlefields. Plots I to XX were completed
by 1920 and contain mostly Australian graves, almost all from the period
March to August 1918. Plots IIIA, VIA, XIIIA and XVIA, and Rows in
other Plots lettered AA, were completed by 1925, and contain a much larger
proportion of unidentified graves brought from a wider area. Later still, 444
graves were brought in from Dury Hospital Military Cemetery.

There are now 2,146 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War
buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 609 of the burials are unidentified
but there are special memorials to five casualties known or believed to be
buried among them.


William Benjamin Heath is also commemorated on the memorial tablet within Knaphill Holy Trinity Church.