WD Crozier

Memorials - Walton-le-Dale - Crozier Family Memorial Window

St Leonard's Church, Church Brow, Walton-le-Dale, PR5 4HJ
OS Grid Reference - SD 56143 28124
IWM War Memorial Register - WM Ref 42704
War Memorials Online - Not on site (4 May 2017)

Location incorrect on IWM War Memorial Register (4 May 2017)

The window is located within St. Leonard's Church, Walton-le-Dale and commemorates three members of the Crozier family of Walton-le-Dale. The dedication contains words from COLOSSIANS 3:14 and there is a personal and wider dedication at the foot of the panes.

And above all these things put on
Charity, which is the bond of perfectness
And let the peace of God rule in your
hearts to the which also ye are called

To the memory of R. Leonard G. Stafford and H. Cyril Crozier
and their village compatriots who fell in the Great War 1914-1918

My father... the hero. More than 90 years ago, a five-year-old girl consoled her sobbing mother after a poignant message revealed what they both feared. It had been days since Violet Crozier had heard anything from her husband who was fighting as a gunner for the Royal Garrison Artillery in northern France.
But soon after a fateful telegram arrived courtesy of a postman and caring neighbour informing the family that her 37-year-old husband George Stafford Crozier had been killed in action.
Nine decades on, 96-year-old Eileen Unsworth, of Unsworth Court, Leyland, still remembers that day vividly and how it devastated her family.
Stafford, who owned a watch-making and jewellery business, was the third brother out of five in the family killed in the conflict - others had been her uncles Richard Leonard Crozier and Sgt Henry Cyril Crozier.
"All of the deaths were terribly hard on the family and were never something that would ever come up in conversation later on. We were devastated.
"My father loved us a lot - I remember how he used to throw me up in the air and catch me and you always looked forward to him coming home."
And the death came only days after her father went back to war on March 13 after 13 days of leave. He was killed on Friday March 29 - Good Friday - and is buried in the Mezieres Communal Cemetery with a grave number also featuring 13-D13.
Mrs Unsworth adds: "I can only remember my father coming home on his last leave when I was five. I can remember him taking Muriel and myself to a toy shop to buy something we wanted. I got a little purse which I still have today."
Little is known about how he was killed but the date and location of Stafford's death means it is likely he could have died as a result of the German capture of Mezieres which the allies later retook in August 1918.
Her uncle Richard Leonard Crozier, the oldest of the brothers, had died aged 40 just three months before on December 11.
The gunner was supporting the Italian war effort with the Royal Field Artillery and is buried at the Giavera British Cemetery in Italy. Her other uncle Sgt Henry Cyril Crozier, of the York and Lancaster Regiment, died on July 1, 1916. Again, few details are known of his death although the date marks the start of the Battle of the Somme which led to 60,000 British casualties - the bloodiest day in British military history.
His name features on the Thiepval Memorial as he was missing in action. His body was never found though he was later awarded a medal for bravery.
After the First World War Mrs Unsworth trained as a teacher and went to work in infants schools in Liverpool, Longridge and Euxton. She married William, who also served in the Army as a driver in the Middle East during the Second World War.
The widow has since outlived her husband and immediate family and now spends her spare time driving to see her two children, two grandchildren and three Great-grandchildren in her Nissan Micra car.
She says: "The more I think about the First World War, I think what a waste of life it was." LANCASHIRE EVENING POST - Saturday 8 November 2008

Charles O'Donnell
Please email the project with any amendments or corrections
Published 4 May 2017