EDWIN GEORGE LING
There had been members of the Ling family living in Portsmouth for many years but none of them seem to have been related to Edwin George whose father Robert William (b. 1868) did not arrive from his native Yorkshire until the 1880s. That he did so at all was probably because he was a seaman; that he stayed may well have been because he met and married a local woman, Ellen Fletcher (b. 1870), and set up home at 2 Nessus Street.
By 1891 the couple had two children, Ellen (b. 1889) and Robert (b. 1891) and in 1895 Edwin George was born. Around the same time Robert snr. took up work as a ship's rigger and the family moved to 9 Centaur Street. They moved again, to 4 Bevis Road sometime prior to the 1911 census but by then Edwin George had left home having been a pupil of the Secondary School for nearly three years between 1906 and 1909 and then passed into the Army as a Boy Artificer.
He continued his training and education at Ordnance College, Woolwich (which is where he was recorded in the 1911 census), and when war broke out he went to France in the R.F.A. as one of the "Old Contemptibles." In those early days of the war he shared the fatigue of the advance to Mons and the long marches and desperate fighting against superior numbers in the retreat from Mons to the Marne. Later he fought at Ypres, where he was severely wounded. He returned to England and recovered from his wounds. After a short stay at Hilsea, Edwin George Ling, then Sergeant in the Field Artillery, was sent to France where he died in hospital of meningitis on June 26th, 1915.
Further Information
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website lists Sergeant EG Ling, (60497), Royal Field Artillery, date of death, 26/06/1915, buried at the Longuenesse (St. Omer) Souvenir Cemetery (Grave Ref: I.A.168.).
Edwin Ling is remembered on the Southern Grammar School WW1 Memorial and on the Cenotaph. He is not listed in the 'National Roll of the Great War'.