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| Captain George Shepherd and Daughter Rosanna on her wedding day (1942) |
2nd Lt. (A/Capt) George Shepherd originally served in the West Surrey Regiment as a Sergeant before taking a commission in the 2/10th Middlesex, as a 2nd Lieut and later Acting Captain.
He was awarded the 1914-15 Star (Mons Star) and the British and Victory medals together with the Military Cross. He was commissioned on 28.9.1915 serving in the Gallipoli Campaign.
Captain Shepherd was wounded in the legs in Gaza in 1917 where he won the Military Cross. His citation reads:
"For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. When the left flank of his battalion was exposed, he pushed forward with three men and covered it for half an hour without assistance, under a cross fire from machine guns, setting a very fine example to his company. Dated, near Gaza, 26th and 27th March 1917."
After the war he worked with his father, George Sr., in his Cart, Caravan and General Smith business, taking the business over when George Sr. retired. Captain Shepherd, as he continued to be known, then employed his younger brother Fred to help with the business.
He married Rosanna Staines and raised three children, Rosanna, Eileen and Edward (Ted) Shepherd.
His siblings were Maude, Elsie, Frank (father of John and Paul), Dora (married Stanley Birch mother of Edwin and Rhoda), Jessie (who married Reginald Goldsmid, mother of Barbara and Michael), Fred and Blanche Mary(who married Wilfred Baden Bradford, mother of Roger and Gillian, now living in Australia).
Dora and Frank were in the butcher business and Jessie was a teacher who married Reg (Goldie) Goldsmid on 8/28/1928, also a teacher, who each became principals of their respective schools in Seven Oaks, Kent.
Maude and Elsie were civil servants who lost both of their fiancees in WW 1. Maude never married. Elsie Married when she was 72 to a man with one leg. Her brother Frank also married in his 70s, for the first time.
Blanche nursed her mother Mary Loftus Shepherd who eventually died of cancer. She then became nanny to Dora's children Edwin and Rhoda. She and Wilfred (Bill) Baden Bradford lived in a flat above the E. Birch Butcher shop whose sad animals so affected Rosanna Shepherd that she became a vegetarian all her life.
