18520 PRIVATE WILLIAM WARD
3RD BATALION COLDSTREAM GUARDS
KILLED IN ACTION
12TH SEPTEMBER 1917
AGE 33 YEARS
William’s name on the Tyne Cot memorial to the missing
Like his younger brother Robert (see his story), William junior, known by family and friends as Willie, was born in one of the villages local to Halesworth. He first saw the world at Spexhall in the second quarter of 1886. His father, also William, was a horseman employed on a farm. His mother Emma (née Greenard), gave birth to eight children, with the eldest being Willie. After attending the local school, and while living with his family in one of the Broadway cottages on the then outskirts of the town, he found work as a cattle feeder on the farm of Mr John Lawn of Spexhall. On reaching manhood he joined the employ of Messrs Parry and Sons at their Maltings in Quay Street, Halesworth, where he remained until being called to serve in the army during World War One. At some time during the early years of the 1900s Willie met and began courting Eliza Youell who hailed from the local village of Rumburgh where she was born in 1881. At the time of the 1911 census Eliza was employed and living as a servant for Doctor Percy Warwick and his daughter at their home in Holton Road. During the fourth quarter of 1913 Willie and Eliza married, eventually setting up home at 66 Chediston Street. It would have been here that on 2nd February 1915 their first and only child, a daughter named Beatrice, was born.
Like his younger brother Bob, as a recently married man with a stable job and their first child on the way, Willie was not one of those who rushed to enlist in the armed forces at the beginning of the Great War in August 1914. However, at the introduction of conscription in January 1916, he was eventually called to serve in July of that year. On his arrival at the recruiting centre in Ipswich he was classified as fit to serve and must have been of good stature as he was chosen to enlist in to one of England’s senior regiments of the Brigade of Guards, joining the Coldstream Guards with the soldier’s number of 18520. It is likely that, shortly after, he travelled to the Guards Regimental Depot, then situated at Caterham in Surrey. Here he would have gone on to undergo some six months of basic training before being despatched to France in early February 1917 to join the Coldstream Guards’ 3rd Battalion.
The 3rd Coldstreams prior to the beginning of the war had been stationed at Chelsea Barracks in central London where they had been carrying out public duties. At the outbreak of hostilities in early August 1914, they joined with the other battalions of the 4th Guards Brigade in crossing to France on 13th August to become part of the British Expeditionary Force. By the end of the war in November 1918 the Coldstream Guards, from all four of their fighting battalions, had suffered total losses in excess of three thousand, eight hundred and sixty all ranks.
At the time Willie had joined the 3rd Coldstreams they had been transferred to serve in the 1st Guards Brigade of the recently formed Guards Division which had come into being in August of 1915. On his arrival his battalion were serving in the area of the French town of Albert on the Somme, where they had suffered many weeks of freezing weather and snow, with very little action to break the boredom. With the coming of Spring, Willie, with his comrades of the 3rd Coldstreams, fought through several major actions in which it would appear that he came through unscathed. At the beginning of September 1917 the official war diary for the battalion shows that they were enjoying a short period of rest in Charterhouse Camp in the Wijdendrift sector, near the village of Langemark in the Flanders region of Belgium. On 8th September they entered the front line to relieve their sister battalion of the 2nd Coldstreams. During their second night in the trenches, the Germans raided one of the battalions advance listening posts situated to the front of the main trench line, but the enemy were repulsed without any losses to the Guardsmen. The next night of the 11th to 12th September the Germans, now aware of the exact location of the listening post, carried out another raid but this time laying down a short barrage of shellfire onto the post before they attacked. It was most likely then that Willie had met his end with eleven other ranks and one Officer being killed and several men wounded. On researching those who had died that night, it transpires that the Officer who had possibly been Willie’s platoon commander was Second Lieutenant Eric Balfour ‘Bill’ Lundie who, prior to the war, had been a renowned member of the South African cricket team, who had played in the fifth test match during England’s tour of South Africa in 1913-14. A report of his death mentions that he had been killed by shellfire. This could well explain why he and poor Willie have no known grave. Both are remembered today on the Tyne Cot memorial to the missing in Belgium. In a cruel twist of fate for two families from Halesworth, the only other serving member of the Brigade of Guards from the town to lose his life in the war was Harry Pettitt of the Grenadier Guards (see his story) who was killed on 7th October 1917 while serving on the same battlefield as Willie, just three weeks after his death.
The news of Willie’s death was announced by his wife Eliza in the Halesworth Times newspaper on 2nd October 1917. Here she related that the news of her loss had originally been received in a letter from one of William’s chums. This then had been confirmed by an official notification from the War Office. After hearing of her husband’s death Eliza submitted a pension claim for herself and daughter Beatrice, for which she had been awarded a weekly allowance of 13s.9d (69p) with a further 5s.0d (25p) for Beatrice, with the child’s payment ceasing on her sixteenth birthday in February 1931.
On 21st July 1919 Eliza also received the second War Gratuity payment which then totalled a sum of £8.4s.9d (£8.24p). As well as the financial awards, she would also have been entitled to claim her husband’s medal awards of the British War and Victory medals with his named bronze memorial plaque and scroll.
The location of these awards is not known.
Although Willie’s death had been a great shock to his wife, his poor mother Emma must have been totally bereft. She not only lost her two sons within four months of each other but on 28th November 1918 her husband William passed away. In the 16th September 1919 edition of the town’s newspaper she paid to have an In Memorial Notice printed which carried the following verse.
We often sit and talk of the times we’ve had together,
A shadow o’er our life is cast, our dear boys gone for ever;
Their King and Country call them, and the call was not in vain,
On England’s Roll of Honour, you’ll find dear Bob and Willie’s name
From their loving Mother, Sisters and Brothers.
On marrying Eliza in 1913 she and Willie set up home at No.66 Chediston Street, the last home on the right in this period photograph.