Mexborough and Swinton Times April 27, 1918

Capt. E. P. Cropper, M.C.
West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Own)

Captain (and Adjutant) Edward Percival . Cropper, M.C. (West Yorks. Regt.), second son of the Rev. James Cropper, rector of Wombwell, and Mrs. Cropper, was killed in action in France on March 23. He was aged 21, and had been educated at Green Bank, Liverpool, and King William College, Douglas, I.O.M.

He entered Sandhurst in Dec.1914, and received his commission in the following June going to the front in July, 1916. On July 31, 1917, the opening day of the third battle of Ypres, he displayed conspicuous gallantry, and was gazetted M.C. on Sept. 26, 1917, the Military, Cross being awarded, according to the official announcement, in the following circumstances:

“When his commanding officer and second-in-command had become casualties he assumed command and Jed his battalion with splendid ability and coolness, a successfully beating off hostile counter-attacks under great difficulties, and displaying’ a grasp of the situation, and a power of coping with it, admirable in so young an officer.”

The Rev. James Cropper, who has just completed a period of service as chaplain in France, has returned to his parish, and he and Mrs. Cropper have received several messages of sympathy from the Front. Their son’s commanding officer wrote on April 3:

 “I am awfully distressed to losing him. He was such a fine fellow, and has done such splendid service with the regiment.” The major writes: “He and I had served together for eighteen months, and he was a close friend. His loss to the regiment is irreparable, and personally I feel it very much. At the time of his death. he was doing one his many gallant actions. He was a great soldier, and a gentleman in every sense of the word.”