William Thomas Owen 1st Royal Warwickshire Regiment

[Guest]

Hello fellow researchers, I am trying to find any information about my great grandfather William Thomas Owen.  He was enrolled in the 1st Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment and his death is recorded as 30/04/16. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Michelle Young]

Welcome to the forum. I have split this into a new topic so hopefully you should receive some assistance.

Michelle 

[ss002d6252]

#4574 Owen.

 

War gratuity was £7 (net), £9 (gross). This tells us he had 20 months service at the point of death on 30 April 1916 and so we can say he enlisted in the month from 31 August 1914

Craig

[PRC]

Previously posted in the other thread and now slightly redundant

 

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Posted 56 minutes ago (edited)

Hi and welcome to the forum.

 

Do you know how old William was when he died - if his service number, (4574) was a Regular Army one which enrolling in the 1st Battalion would imply then he either joined up in 1895 or after the outbreak of war. See https://armyservicenumbers.blogspot.com/2009/09/roayl-warwickshire-regiment-regular.html

for a guide as to how service numbers were issued to the Regular Army Battalions of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

 

If he was the older soldier then he was't with the Battalion at the outbreak of war and even on mobilisation wasn't one of the men used to bring the Battalion up to wartime strength. The 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, landed in France on the 22nd August 1914.

See https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/regiments-and-corps/the-british-infantry-regiments-of-1914-1918/royal-warwickshire-regiment/

 

The Medal Index Card for Private 4574 William T. Owen shows he didn't get to France until the 4th May 1915, so would have served in another UK based Battalion before that.

 

Soldiers Died in the Great War shows him as killed in action on the 30th April 1916. Hopefully someone will be along soon who has access to the Battalion War Diary and can give you some idea of what the Battalion were up to - there were no major battles at that time, so sadly it may just be the routine attrition of trench warfare.

 

His Commonwealth War Graves Commission webpage shows him as buried at Bienvillers Military Cemetery. The same sites webpage for the Cemetery records:-

 

Location Information - Bienvillers is a large village in the department of the Pas de Calais 18 kilometres south-west of Arras.

 

History Information

Bienvillers Military Cemetery was begun in September 1915 by the 37th Division, carried on by other Divisions in the line until March 1917, reopened from March to September 1918, when the village was again near the front line, and completed in 1922-24 when a number of graves, mainly of 1916, were brought in from the battlefields of the Ancre. Its twenty-one plots show a remarkable alternation of original burials in regimental or divisional groups, and groups of concentrated graves.

See: https://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/26502/bienvillers-military-cemetery/

 

(His is one of the original graves rather than one recovered post-war from the battlefield).

 

A check of the CWGC website shows him to be one of three men of the 1st Battalion who lost their lives on this day and they are buried in consecutive graves -  Private 9556 J. Marshall lies in Grave III B.7, Private 459 H. A. Fawson in Grave III B.8 and William in Grave III B.9.

 

From experience the part of the West Midlands where the three of them seem to be from is quite well covered by Great War Era newspaper titles held by the British Newspaper Archive. I would normally suggest try that out at your local public library if you are in the UK, but obviously that's a bit of a non-starter at the moment.  It's normally the source of UK newspapers for the main subscription Genealogy websites.

 

Hope that gets you started, and good luck with your search,

 

Peter

[Guest]

Thank you so much for the information - such a shame not to have family members  available to help with the puzzle.