Private Cecil Edward Augustus Martin (service number G/12130) served with the 2nd Battalion, Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), and was killed in action on 2 April 1917 during operations near Croisilles on the Western Front.
He is buried in Croisilles British Cemetery in the Pas‑de‑Calais, France, where his grave lies among those of many comrades from the 7th Division who fell in the same fighting.
Early Life and Family
Cecil Edward Augustus Martin was born in Barham, Kent, in 1883, his birth registered in the Bridge district (volume 2A, page 781, line number 49). He was baptised at St John the Baptist, Barham, on 21 August 1883, confirming his roots in this rural East Kent parish.
He was the son of George Martin, an agricultural labourer and later an army pensioner, and his wife Isabella (née Hawkins), who married at St Mary Northgate, Canterbury, in 1878. The family moved between Surrey, Jersey, and Kent with George’s army service before settling in The Street, Barham, where several of Cecil’s siblings were also raised.
In the 1891 census Cecil appears as a scholar in Barham, living on The Street with his parents and siblings, reflecting a modest village upbringing in the Kent countryside. By 1901 he was still in The Street, Barham, recorded as a 17‑year‑old (the report notes him as 19) working as an errand boy, a typical occupation for a young man moving from school into casual employment.
By the 1911 census he is listed at Derringstone, Barham, near Canterbury, employed as a general labourer, a flexible role that could embrace farm work, building, and other manual jobs as required. No spouse or children are recorded in the individual report, and later notes describe him as having no wife or offspring, suggesting that Cecil never married and left no direct descendants.
Born, baptised, and brought up in Barham, Cecil Martin was very much a son of rural East Kent.
Reconstructed from civil registration and census records
Military Service with the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment)
The individual report records Cecil’s military service between about 1908 and 1917, with his enlistment age given as twenty‑three and his theatre of war as Western Europe. He enlisted at Canterbury and served as Private G/12130 in the 2nd Battalion, Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), known formally as the Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey), the senior English line infantry regiment of the British Army after the Royal Scots.
The Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey) traced its origins to 1661 and saw service across the British Empire before the First World War. In 1959 it amalgamated with the East Surrey Regiment to form the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment, and through later amalgamations its lineage today is carried by the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment.
At the outbreak of the First World War, the 2nd Battalion of the Queen’s was stationed at Pretoria in South Africa. On 27 August 1914 it embarked from Cape Town for England, arriving at Southampton on 19 September 1914 and moving to Lyndhurst to join the 22nd Brigade of the 7th Division. On 6 October 1914 it was mobilised for war, landing at Zeebrugge and quickly entering the fighting on the Western Front.
The battalion and its division fought in some of the hardest‑fought early battles of the war, including the First Battle of Ypres in 1914, where the 7th Division suffered such heavy casualties that it took until 1915 to rebuild its strength. In 1915 the 2nd Queen’s took part in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the Battle of Aubers, the Battle of Festubert, the second action of Givenchy, and the Battle of Loos, forming part of the British effort to break the German lines in northern France and Flanders.
On 20 December 1915 the battalion transferred to the 91st Brigade within the 7th Division. In 1916 it fought on the Somme in the Battle of Albert, the Battle of Bazentin, the Battle of Delville Wood, the Battle of Guillemont, and subsequent operations on the Ancre, enduring prolonged trench warfare and repeated assaults against the German defences. Cecil’s service in the Western European theatre would have placed him amid this cycle of attack, consolidation, and attrition.
As a private of the 2nd Queen’s, Martin marched and fought with the 7th Division in many of the British Army’s hardest campaigns on the Western Front.
Summary of divisional operations 1914–1917
The 2nd Battalion at Croisilles, April 1917
In early 1917 the German Army withdrew to the strongly fortified Hindenburg Line, abandoning some forward positions. The 7th Division, including the 2nd Battalion, Queen’s, advanced to follow up this retreat and was tasked with attacking and capturing the village of Croisilles, south‑east of Arras, as part of these operations.
Croisilles British Cemetery’s historical summary notes that the 7th Division attacked Croisilles in March 1917 and took it on 2 April 1917. Plots I and II of the cemetery were begun between April 1917 and March 1918, initially to bury those killed in and around the village during the fighting, and later extended after the Armistice when graves were brought in from neighbouring battlefields and smaller burial grounds.
Other accounts of the 2nd Queen’s and 91st Brigade describe how the battalion moved forward from assembly positions to assault German positions covering Croisilles, suffering heavy casualties in the process. The majority of the dead from the 2nd Queen’s who fell on 2 April 1917 are buried in Croisilles British Cemetery, particularly in Plot I, Row A, underlining the intensity of the fighting on the day Cecil was killed.
Thus, at the time of his death, Private Martin’s unit was serving as part of 91st Brigade, 7th Division, attacking Croisilles against strong German opposition during the wider Arras–Hindenburg Line operations of spring 1917. His burial in Croisilles British Cemetery, close to the village the division captured on 2 April, ties his personal story directly to this key phase of the war on the Western Front.
On 2 April 1917 the 2nd Queen’s helped take Croisilles; many of those who fell that day, including Cecil Martin, now rest together in the British cemetery on the village’s edge.
Derived from Croisilles cemetery history and 7th Division accounts
Circumstances of Death
The individual report records that Cecil Edward Augustus Martin was killed in action on 2 April 1917 in France. This date coincides exactly with the day on which the 7th Division captured Croisilles, linking his death to the assault that secured the village from German control.
The cause of death is simply given as “Killed in Action”, with no surviving personal account in the report to describe the precise circumstances. However, the concentration of 2nd Queen’s graves from that date in Croisilles British Cemetery, together with divisional histories, strongly suggests that he fell during the attack or in the immediate fighting around the village’s defences.
Burial and Commemoration
Private Martin is buried in Croisilles British Cemetery, Pas‑de‑Calais, France, in grave I.A.19, as recorded in his individual report and corroborated by independent genealogical research. The cemetery lies to the south‑west of the village centre, off the road to St Léger, and today contains over 1,100 Commonwealth burials and commemorations from the First World War.
According to the cemetery history, most of the soldiers buried there belonged to the Guards, 7th and 21st Divisions, reflecting the units engaged in the fighting for Croisilles and the subsequent German offensives and Allied counter‑attacks in 1917–1918. Plots I and II, in which Cecil’s grave is located, were made between April 1917 and March 1918, after which further graves were concentrated there from surrounding battlefields and smaller cemeteries.[web:43]
His Commonwealth War Graves Commission entry can be accessed via the CWGC database: CWGC casualty details for Private C. E. A. Martin. A further genealogical summary, including his parents and siblings, is available at Faded Genes: Cecil Edward Augustus Martin 1883–1917.
Legacy and Descendants
The individual report records no spouse and no children for Cecil Edward Augustus Martin, and independent research similarly finds no evidence that he married. His immediate legacy therefore rests with his parents and siblings, with the Martin and Hawkins families of Barham and Canterbury preserving his memory privately in the years after the war.
More broadly, his story forms part of the collective legacy of the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), whose battalions fought from Tangier in the seventeenth century through the major campaigns of the First World War. As one of many ordinary soldiers from rural Kent who served and died with the 2nd Battalion on the Western Front, Cecil represents the deep contribution of small villages like Barham to Britain’s war effort.
For descendants of his wider family, resources such as Ancestry and other genealogical databases can be used to reconstruct the Martin and Hawkins lines in greater depth, drawing on the civil registrations, census entries, and military sources referenced here. In this way, Private Cecil Edward Augustus Martin’s short life—rooted in Barham and ended at Croisilles—can be placed within a richer family and regimental narrative.
Sources
- Individual report for Private Cecil Edward Augustus Martin (family tree compilation, including birth and baptism details, census entries for Barham and Derringstone, enlistment age, unit, medal entitlement, and Croisilles British Cemetery grave reference I.A.19).
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission – casualty record for “MARTIN, –”, Private G/12130, 2nd Bn., Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment), Croisilles British Cemetery, grave I.A.19: CWGC casualty details.
- Faded Genes – “Cecil Edward Augustus MARTIN 1883–1917” (family reconstruction with parents George Martin and Isabella Hawkins, census addresses in Barham, enlistment at Canterbury, and confirmation of Croisilles grave reference): Faded Genes: Cecil Edward Augustus Martin.
- Croisilles British Cemetery, Pas‑de‑Calais – cemetery history and description (noting capture of Croisilles by 7th Division on 2 April 1917, and creation of Plots I–II for those killed in and around the village): Croisilles British Cemetery.
- The Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey) – regimental history and lineage, including service as the senior English line infantry regiment and later amalgamation into the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment: National Army Museum overview The Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey) and Wikipedia entry Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey) (with supporting summary at Wikiwand).
- Accounts and profiles of Croisilles fighting and 2nd Queen’s casualties (used for context on 7th Division’s attack on Croisilles on 2 April 1917 and the concentration of 2nd Queen’s graves in Croisilles British Cemetery): London War Memorial and related Arras/Croisilles material at London War Memorial – online resource.
