Robert Thomas Creasey (also known as Thomas Robert Creasey) was born in the village of Ash, near Farnham in Surrey, on 3rd January 1896. He was the youngest of four children to Edwin and Elizabeth Creasey. Edwin was the landlord of the Standard of England public house in the village.

When he died in 1902, Elizabeth moved her family to Somerset, where she had been born and where she still had relatives living. With four young children to raise, she married again in April 1903, to local dairy farmer Frederick Gould.

Robert was working as a farmer when war was declared, but was one of the first to step forward and volunteer. He enlisted in the Somerset Light Infantry and in the autumn of 1915 was involved in the fighting in Gallipoli.

In July 1916 Private Creasey transferred to the Machine Gun Corps. Sadly, little further information about his military life is available, but he survived the war, and returned home to Somerset on furlough, before being demobbed.

This is where Robert’s trail ends. He passed away at home on 15th February 1919, presumably from one of the lung conditions running rampant across a war-torn continent. He was just 23 years of age.

Robert Thomas Creasey was laid to rest in the graveyard of St Michael and All Angel’s Church in Angersleigh, Somerset, not far from where his mother lived.

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