Name: Willie Hargreaves
Rank: Private
Unit/Regiment: 1/4th Battalion, The King’s Own (Yorkshire Light Infantry)
Service Number: 2024261
Date of Death: 28 April 1918
Memorial: Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium
Willie Hargreaves – or William as he is recorded on the St Mary’s War Memorial – was born in Batley in 1895. His parents, Charles Hargreaves from Batley and Thornhill-born Annie Hirst, married at Batley Parish Church on 16 July 1885. Their eight children included Louisa, who died at the age of 23 months on 19 December 1890; George William, who was 12 months old when he died in August 1892; Eliza who died in March 1895, age one; Percy who survived two months, with his death taking place on 20 July 1898; and Friend who died on the 29 January 1906, aged six months. Willie was their only child to reach adulthood.
The Hargreaves family lived in and around the Wards Hill area of Batley, with Charles working in the textile industry as a card cleaner. This involved removing waste which built up in the mill’s carding and other machines. It sometimes also involved carrying out minor repairs to the machines. Annie, when work is recorded for her, was also employed in the textile industry, as a weaver. It was therefore only natural that after leaving school Willie should also earn a living in the local mills. The 1911 census records him as a cloth finisher for a woollen manufacturer. Before enlisting, he worked as a tenterer at rug and blanket manufacturers Messrs. John Fenton and Sons, Batley Carr.2 This job involved stretching the woollen cloth, either by steam or whilst wet, then regulating the steam pipes or gas jets to dry it under tension.
In December 1913 Willie was baptised into the Catholic faith at St Mary of the Angels. Less than two years later on 25 November 1915, with war now raging, he married Margaret Agnes Lynch in the same church. The daughter of Thomas and Mary Lynch, she went back to her family home at Wards Hill whilst her husband undertook military service with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI), being posted shortly after their marriage. He initially served as a Private with the 2/4th Battalion, before being transferred to the 1/4th. During the two years or so of his military service he was invalided home once due to sickness.3.
He was killed in the final year of the War, during the German Spring Offensive of 1918. There is a discrepancy around the exact date, with some sources, including newspaper reports and Red Cross enquiries by his widow in the months immediately after, indicating he was posted missing from 14 April. Other sources, including the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, along with information provided to the Batley War Memorial Committee again by his widow, indicated he was missing presumed dead on 28 April 1918, with one record stating on or since that date.4
This period was a tumultuous one for the British Army, taken by surprise by these German’s last throw of the dice attacks spearheaded by their elite troops. Inevitably it led to confusion around casualties.
The Offensive began on 21 March 1918 with an attack, codenamed Operation Michael, along a 40-mile front from just north of Arras, encompassing the ground fought over in the 1916 Battle of the Somme. By 5 April 1918, when the Operation Michael phase ground to a halt, the Germans had taken 1,200 square miles of territory including several important French towns including Bapaume, Albert and Pèronne,5 advancing 40 miles and inflicting losses on the heavily outnumbered British in the region of 177,739. Many of this total were taken prisoner as the Germans advanced.6 It marked a change from the established pattern of trench warfare with limited gains, to a mobile war with movement across swathes of land.
The next phase of the offensive was Operation Georgette (Battle of the Lys was the official name given by the British), which began with an intense bombardment of high-explosive and gas shells over British and Portuguese positions on a 10-mile front south of Armentieres at 4.15am on 9 April.7 The German aim for this phase was to capture Ypres and force the British back to the Channel Ports. That first day the Germans took Fleurbaix, Laventie and Richebourg in a three-and-a-half mile advance. By 11 April, such was the peril of the situation, Sir Douglas Haig issued his famous “backs to the wall” order, calling on Allied troops to stand firm against the Germans.
On 14 April 1918 the 1/4th KOYLI were involved in the defence of Neuve Eglise at a heavy cost. Amongst the officers one was killed and two wounded. Amongst the men, 38 were killed, two died of wounds, and there was an unknown number wounded and missing.8 This was the day Willie Hargreaves was first reported missing according to earlier sources. For more details about the 1/4th KOYLI’s part in this initial April phase confronting the German’s in Operation Georgette please read the biography of John Leech, a St Mary’s man who died on 13 April 1918.
However, here in Willie Hargreave’s biography, I will focus on action around the 28 April 1918, the official date of his death. On this day, the 1/4th KOYLI relieved a heavily depleted 9th KOYLI in the line, replacing them in the Cheapside trenches just north of Kemmel, the relief being completed by 3am that morning. Willie was in “Y” Company’s 9 Platoon.9
The 1/4th KOYLI Unit War Diary entries for the next couple of days were brief:
28.4.18 7.35 pm Barrage opened; no infantry action.
29.4.18 5 am Intense enemy barrage opened and the enemy attacked on a wide front. Attack repulsed by rifle and Lewis Gun fire; failed to reach our line at any point. Much sniping during the whole of the day.
5.20 pm Enemy crossed our front to attack on right; they were made to deploy by rifle and Lewis Gun fire from our support Company.
“Y” Company relieved by Australian Light Horse, who came under the tactical disposition of the Commanding Officer.
“Y” Company reinforced “W” Company on the Left. Dispositions:- 1/5th Y &L10 on left, “W”, “Y”, “X”, and Australian Light Horse on Right, “Z” Company in Support.
30.4.18. Battalion relieved by 3rd Worcesters and proceeded to Camp North of RENINGHELST.11
In the immediate aftermath, the Diary stated for the whole operation between 10 – 29 April 1918 losses amounted to three officers killed and 13 wounded; and 64 Other Ranks killed, 340 wounded, 93 missing and 13 died of wounds – with Willie presumably amongst the missing number.12
But in the final analysis the dead were under-reported with one source stating:
…in the fighting from 10 to 30 April 1918 the 1/4th KOYLI suffered as many killed (140) as it had sustained in the 82 days it was involved in the 1916 Battle of the Somme.13
By June 1918 the local newspaper carried a report that Willie Hargreaves was posted missing. His wife, Margaret Agnes, tried to find out his whereabouts via the Red Cross, initially to no avail. However, the Red Cross were gradually pulling together strands of information, with the following summary:
5.7.18 Hargreaves W No 202426 1/4th K.O. Yorks L.I…found dead, and buried south of Mount Kemmel. No further details known.
Paybook sent in from a Res. Inf. Regt. on 21.5.18.14
There is evidence therefore that Willie’s body was found and buried in the summer of 1918. But as the ground continued to be fought over, and churned up as shelling continued, he was once more lost and his body never relocated again with a positive identification. It means he still has no known grave, and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial.
In addition to St Mary’s, he is also remembered on the Batley War Memorial, though his mother never lived to see the unveiling of either of these. A little over a month from the signing of the Armistice, on 13 December 1918, Annie Hargreaves died.
His widow, Margaret Agnes, was issued with his Victory Medal and British War Medal. She was also awarded a war widow’s pension. In 1921 she was living at No 7 Yard, 3 Wards Hill, with her mother and four sisters, working as a woollen weaver at J., T. and J. Taylor’s Blakeridge Mills in Batley.14 She continued working for the company through the following years despite her deteriorating health. At the relatively young age of 35, and after a long illness patiently borne, she died on 3 January 1928 at the Beaumont Street, Mount Pleasant home of her married sister, Gertrude North. Right to the very end she remained the “beloved wife of the late William Hargreaves”.15
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Footnotes:
1. His earlier service number was 5340.
2. Batley News, 15 June 1918.
3. Ibid.
4. Soldiers’ Effects Register.
5. Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 9 Facts about Operation Michael, https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/news/9-facts-about-operation-michael/
6. The Long, Long Trail, The First Battles of the Somme, 1918 https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/battles/battles-of-the-western-front-in-france-and-flanders/the-first-battles-of-the-somme-1918/
7. The Accrington Pals, Battle of the Lys (Hazebrouck), 11th-13th April 1918, http://www.pals.org.uk/lys.htm
8. 1/4th KOYLI, Unit War Diary, TNA, WO95/2806/1.
9. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Records. Although elsewhere the records mention “B” Company, the deployment on the day means the “Y” Company notation is the correct one in this period.
10. York and Lancaster.
11. 1/4th KOYLI, Unit War Diary, Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Johnson, Malcolm K. Saturday Soldiers: The Territorial Battalions of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry 1/4th 1/5th 5th 2/4th 2/5th, 1908-1919. Doncaster: Doncaster Museum Service, 2004.
14. ICRC Records, Ibid.
15. Batley News, 28 January 1928.
Other Sources:
• Batley Cemetery Burial Registers.
• Bond, Reginald C. History of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in the Great War, 1914-1918. London: P. Lund, Humphries, 1929.
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
• GRO Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes.
• Imperial War Museum.
• Long, Long Trail, https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/.
• Medal Index Card.
• Newspapers – various editions of the Batley papers.
• Parish Registers – various.
• Pension Record Cards and Ledgers, Western Front Association;
• Soldiers Died in the Great War.
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