BORN – Oswestry
HOMEFRONT – Place / Occupations / St Oswald’s Church
EDUCATION – Apprentice Grocer
JOB – Regular Army
UNIT – 1 Bn King’s Shropshire Light Infantry
RANK – Lance Corporal 6497
THEATRE – Ypres / La Brique. 1 Bn King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. 17 – 20 December 1915.
DIED – DoW (gas) 20 December 1915.
BURIED – Ferme Olivier Cemetery, Belgium. (CWGC)
William Henry Weaver was born in Oswestry in 1895 and christened on 21 February that year. His parents were Richard and Jane Weaver. Richard was a labourer in a malt house. William was the youngest of 5 children with brothers Frank and Arthur and sisters Maggie and Sarah. They lived at 8 Chapel Street and later at Soley House on Park Avenue. After leaving school William began an apprenticeship with grocers Messrs. Hunter on The Cross, Oswestry. Around this time he most probably had joined the Special Reserves and, in 1913 when he turned 18, enlisted in the regular army joining 2 Bn KSLI. At the outbreak of war he would have been with the battalion in India. On returning to the UK the battalion went over to France arriving over 22/23 December 1914.
William was wounded in February 1915 when 2 Bn were at Dickebusch, south west of Ypres, and was invalided home. He returned to the Front at the end of April and was posted to 1 Bn KSLI and joined A Company. At the beginning of December 1915 he was granted 5 days leave and returned home to Oswestry. A week after his return to France, on 20 December 1915, he died of wounds after having been gassed. News of William’s death reached his parents just before Christmas.
On 17 December the battalion began tours in the trenches at La Brique, north of Ypres. At 5.30am on 19 December, under a cloud of Phosgene gas, the enemy attacked the KSLI trenches. The attack was driven off but casualties were ORs 6 KIA and 14 wounded and from the gas, 4 killed and 43 suffering from the effects. William died the next day, 20 December, from the effects of the gas. He was 21 years old. In a letter to William’s father Captain Hall, the company C/O, wrote – ‘I much regret to inform you that L/C Weaver died of gas on December 18 last. He was buried at La Brique and a cross erected to him there. L/C Weaver was a keen and promising solder, and when I made him a Lance Corporal recently I did so with the utmost confidence that he would make a good NCO. I wish to sympathise with you very deeply in your loss’. William is buried in Ferme-Olivier Cemetery near Ypres. His headstone reads – ‘Gone but not forgotten by Father, Mother, Brothers and Sisters’. He is also remembered at St Oswald’s Church, Oswestry.
Acknowledgements.
END