Second Lieutenant William Crossman

Second Lieutenant William Ronald Morley Crossman, Q.O.R. ( The C.W.G.C. site shows his Unit as 2nd Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps ). He was killed in action near Veldoek in Belgium during the First Battle of Ypres on 2nd November 1914, aged 20 and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Flanders, Belgium. He was a Regular Soldier and the son of Mrs F.A. Morley Crossman and the late Mr L Morley Crossman of Radcliffe House Bamburgh and was a native of Beal, Northumberland. His father had been a Freeman of Berwick-upon-Tweed and Lord of the Manor of Holy Island and his grandfather was the late Major General Sir William Crossman, K.C.M.G., sometime M.P. for Portsmouth. Second Lieutenant Crossman had been educated at Lyndhurst, Wellington College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst before being commissioned into the K.R.R.C. in February 1914. The photographs show British troops in defensive positions in late 1914.