Remembering Those Who Served - 100 Years of WW1 Commemoration:

Private George Barwell:

George Barwell - Australian Imperial Force - Private, 48th Infantry Battalion, Service No.4566, previously of Otautau:

George Barwell was born during 1863, in Ashley County, Canterbury, NZ. He was the son of Samuel and Dinah Barwell and the second of his family to go to war. Although his early years were spent in Canterbury and George went to the Loburn Public School, his parents owned a farm near Otautau at Ringway for some years, that the brothers Barwell worked on, and which was sold in 1902 when their Father retired. George’s elder brother Private Charles Henry Barwell - when he was alive, had seen service in the Boer War - but was killed in South Africa in 1905, while their father was Sergeant Samuel Barwell, who served in the Crimean and Kattir Wars, and going back further still, their grandfather Lieutenant Barwell had been in the Royal Navy. It seems serving in the military was commonplace in this family.

In 1882 George came to Southland and was farming at Otautau, where he involved himself in thoroughly in the affairs and events in the community there. After trying his hand at the diggings from Preservation Inlet NZ, to Mt. Jackson, Australia – with a time of farming at Orawia in between – and George was still mining in Western Australia when the war broke out, and despite being older than most, he still signed up to give his service to the empire. He left for Egpyt and on to France, where he gave his life on 6th August 1916, during battle in France. George is buried at the Sunken Road Cemetery, Contalmaison, Somme, France, aged 53.

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