BORN – Oswestry
HOMEFRONT – Place / Occupation / St Oswald’s Church
JOB – Mineral Worker
UNIT – 1 Bn King’s Shropshire Light Infantry
RANK – Private 10141
THEATRE – Ypres / Hooge Crater, 1 Bn King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. 1-10 August 1915
DIED – KIA 9 August 1915. Aged 20.
BURIED – Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres (grave unknown). (CWGC)
William Davies was born in Oswestry in 1895. He was the youngest of 4 children with an elder brother, Joseph, and two sisters; Margaret and Luena. By the time he was 6 years old his father, John, had died. At that time he, his siblings and widowed mother, Margaret, were living at 9 Orchard Street, Oswestry. His mother was working as a charwoman. By 1911 the family had moved to 3 Southall Cottages on Willow Street, he was age 16 and was working as a ‘mineral worker’ likely working for one of the towns mineral water bottlers. He joined the regular army around January 1913, when he had turned 18, enlisting at Shrewsbury and posted to 1 Bn King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. By the time of the war his mother had remarried and became Margaret Rigby.
William went over to France with the battalion on 10 September 1914. He was KIA 9 August 1915 when the battalion was in action during the recapture of the mine crater at Hooge in the Ypres Salient. His grave is unknown and he is commemorated on the Menin Gate and also at St Oswald’s Church, Oswestry. In CWGC records his age is given as 16; this is an error, he was aged 20.
Acknowledgements.
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