Edmund was the second child of Edward Thomas Armstrong a Boot and Shoe Finisher and Mary Goodson who had married in Melton Mowbray in 1896.
The couple’s first child, Constance was baptised in Sproxton, near to Melton Mowbray in 1897, but by the time of Edmund’s birth the family had moved to 208 Clarendon Park Road. Edmund was baptised at St Michael & All Angels church in Knighton on 6th November 1898.
The 1911 census shows that the family had moved to 237 Clarendon Park Road and the couple had 5 more children as well as Mary’s mother living with them. Constance was now 14 and working as a Stationary Clerk, Edmund was 12.
Edmund was working as a General Clark when he attested in Leicester to the Army Reserves in July 1916. He joined the East Surrey Regiment but was later compulsorily posted to the 1/21st Battalion of the London Regiment (First Surrey Rifles). He was on the War Office Daily List as missing on 16/5/1918. A later War Office List dated 30/9/1918 reported that Edmund was ‘Previously missing, now reported died as prisoner of war in German hands’. His paperwork shows that the cause of death was not stated, he was 19 when he died.
He is buried at Niederzwehren Cemetery , Cassel (now known as Kassel), Hessen in Germany. The cemetery was part of a prison camp and started by the Germans in 1915 after an epidemic of typhus broke out and hundreds of prisoners and 38 German soldiers died. In 1922 it was decided that it would be one of the cemeteries where graves of Commonwealth servicemen who had died in Germany should be brought. It also includes 13 memorials to casualties buried in Germany who could not be found.
