THIS week we remember Harry Ward and William Pinfield Wells, who both served as Privates with the 8th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment.
Harry’s father died when he was young – he was the eldest of six children born to Julia Ward and the family lived at 12 Silver Street, Redditch.
His mother worked as a charwoman or cleaner and Harry, aged 17 in 1911, as a fish hook maker.
William was born in Feckenham in 1896, the second eldest of seven children born to Frederick and Annie Wells. By 1901 the family was recorded as living in Cotteridge, Birmingham, but by 1911 they were back in the borough, at 88 Evesham Road, Headless Cross, and William, aged 14, was working as a bootmaker.
The 8th Battalion was one of Lord Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ of volunteers which found itself in early October moving towards the frontline during the Battle of the Somme.
Its destination was the Battle for the Transloy Ridges where, on November 5, they found themselves supporting an attack on the steep hill known as the ‘Butte de Warlencourt’.
The diary of the Worcestershires tells how the unit ‘came under a storm of shells’ as the butte was taken, lost, and re-taken again before being finally lost again.
The 6th Battalion of the Gloucesters then relieved the 8th, who were forced to return through a devastated and waterlogged landscaped ‘amid a terrific bombardment’.
Losses were heavy, Pte Ward dying of his wounds on November 7, and Pte Wells, aged 20, on November 8.
He is buried at the Dernancourt Communal Cemetery Extension at Somme in France.
Both soldiers are remembered on the St Stephens War Memorial.
With thanks to the War Diary of the Worcestershire Regiment, Remembering Redditch’s Fallen Heroes, and http://www.worcestershireregiment.com/
