Lance/Corporal William Davies
2460 Kings Own Royal Lancaster Regiment
Killed in Action 1st July 1916, aged 21
Lived at 10 Grange Street
Commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, France
Burnley Express 19/8/1916 - 28/3/1917 - 28/3/1917 - 31/3/1917

Burnley News:Two Burnley Brothers One Wounded and Missing The Others’ Narrow Escape

“Wounded and missing after an engagement on July 1st.” This is the official news which has been received concerning Lance-Corporal (2460) Willie Davies, 1st Battalion, King’s Own Royal Lancasters. Lance-Corporal Davies and his brother, Private J. Davies, had lived with their sister, Mrs. Harold Greenwood, 10, Grange Street, Burnley. Private Lambert, of St. John’s Road, Burnley, writing to his mother recently, stated that Willie Davies had been killed. A shell called in the Army vernacular a “coal-box” exploded, and as the result seven soldiers were killed, five buried and four wounded. A Harle Skye soldier, named William Brierley, tells that he was at a dressing-station, and on inquiring for Lance-Corporal Davies, was informed, “Oh, he has gone under.” Brierley says they got orders to go over the parapet at 7.30 in the morning. In the fighting which ensued, he thinks it is possible the Lance-Corporal was taken prisoner. William Davies is 21. He has spent two birthdays in the trenches. He joined the K.O.R.L. two months before war broke out, and he was in training when hostilities commenced. Formerly he worked at Slater’s, Caldervale, as a weaver. His brother James, who is 19, joined the same regiment six months prior to the war. Private James Davies was attached to the special reserve, and saw much of the heavy fighting around Ypres in the early part of 1915. During February of last year he was wounded by a bullet that caught him in the neck, and travelled to his back. He was taken to hospital, and treated for rheumatism; the opinion of the doctors was that the bullet had grazed his neck, and done no further damage. He had been a month in Rouen and a week in Leeds, when the doctors found the bullet was still in his back. It was taken out at Eastbourne. He returned to the Front, but last winter was invalided to hospital in Dublin for “trench feet” and loss of speech. He left the hospital a week before the riots of some months ago. He is now at Plymouth. Both brothers attended St. Catherine’s Sunday School, where they were taught by the late captain, the Reverend Thomas Riley, of whom they thought very highly. Mrs. Greenwood is very anxious to learn anything about her brother, Lance-Corporal W. Davies.