Edwin Sykes was born in 1890 in a Village in Oxfordshire called Deddington. He married Emma Miller in Somerset. In the 1911 census he was living in Smethwick, Birmingham. He was a flour roller. He had a son called George Percy Miller Sykes who was born in 1910. He left his wife and son and moved to Silloth, Cumberland. He started working in Smiths Flour Mill. According to his Army record he was living with a lady called Mary Goddard, and they had two children both girls. He joined the Regiment in 1914 and he went to France in 1915. He died on the 1st July 1916 and is buried at the Lonsdale Cemetery near Authuille France