Peterborough & The Great War

Biography

Victor Hallard Croft was born on 27 June 1888, in Fleetwood, Lancashire to parents Thomas, a journalist and newspaper reporter in Blackpool, and Kate (nee Hallard).

In May 1908, he was appointed as a second division clerk in the civil service and three years later his appointment to the Local Government Board (England) was listed in the London Gazette, he was living in Ealing, West London by this time.

Victor enlisted into the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) on 18 November 1915, and achieved rapid promotion. He was a Sergeant when his unit, 35 Squadron, embarked for France in January 1917.

He passed through Peterborough on 4 July 1916 and signed the visitors’ book in the rank of Corporal.  He wrote the poem:

“La vie est brève,

Un peu d’espoir,

Un peu de rève

Et puis – bonsoir.”

This roughly translates as: Life is short, A little hoping, A little dreaming, and then – goodbye

He was serving in France on 1 April 1918, when the Royal Air Force (RAF) came into existence; he joined the new service as a Sergeant clerk and served with the RAF until the end of the war.

After the war, Victor returned to the civil service in London where he met and married Alice Wainwright in Hampstead in 1932. Their first child, Hallard, was born in Bromley, Kent in 1936, whilst their other children were born in Yorkshire, Joan (1939) and Lilian (1940).

In 1939, Victor was listed as a civil service clerk staying at Beach Lawn Private Hotel, Dudley Road, Manchester with a group of military service personnel. Alice was living at 28 Forest Gate, Blackpool with their son.  By 1953, when his mother died in Blackpool, he was a retired civil servant.  Victor died in Bromley aged 72 in 1960.

His son, Hallard T Croft, gained a PHd at Cambridge and became a published Professor in the field of Mathematics and Geometry at the university for many years.