|
|
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.
If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.
Site Home
Help & FAQs
Features
Submissions
Information
Advertisements
World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Pte. William Thomas Royle
4th Btn.
from:Blackburn, Lancashire
(d.23 March 1918)
William Thomas Royle was born in Rochdale in 1891. In 1911 he married Mary Ann Hall from Blackburn. Billy and Polly, as they were known, settled in Blackburn and had three daughters Elizabeth (Betty), Jane (Jenny) and Sarah (Sally).
When the First World War broke out, Billy was working as a painter's labourer. As family members, friends and colleagues signed up as volunteers Billy said he was not going to fight until he had to because he had a wife and three children to care for.
One day, opening his lunch box at work, Billy found a white feather. White feathers were given to men, mostly by women, as a sign of their cowardice in not joining up. Originally given by society women to their better off boyfriends when they wanted to get rid of them, the practise was adopted around the country by other classes. Some men actually started wearing badges stating that they were in reserved occupations to avoid being presented with the white feather. On his way home from work that day Billy went to Canterbury St Barracks in Blackburn, signed up and went home to announce what he had done.
Billy was a member of the 4th Battalion East Lancs Regiment. In early 1918 he came home on leave. When he had left home to return to Barracks at Colchester, Polly noticed he had left his dogtag on the windowsill. Bill's brother in law, who was returning to Colchester the next day said he would take it with him. When he arrived in Colchester, Billy had gone, posted overseas.
On March 23rd 1918, in the early hours of the morning, the 4th Battalion East Lancs Regiment was in the trenches of the Somme, waiting for the order to go over the top. Billy, as lookout was one of the first to go. Billy was killed as he went on the offensive, his body was never identified and he remains missing to this day. Billy is commemorated on the memorial to the missing at Pozieres in Northern France
At the end of the war, when the soldiers returned to parade through Blackburn, Polly went along with her mother Sarah. She saw a soldier, who from behind she thought was her Billy. He was Walter Peace and Polly later married him
His story was told to me by his daughter Jane, who was my grandma, and by my great-gran Polly.
Related Content:
Can you help us to add to our records?
The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them
Did your relative live through the Great War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial?
If so please let us know.
Do you know the location of a Great War "Roll of Honour?"We are very keen to track down these often forgotten documents and obtain photographs and transcriptions of the names recorded so that they will be available for all to remember.
Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice.
Celebrate your own Family History
Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Great War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc.
Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.
The free section of The Wartime Memories Project is run by volunteers.
This website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.
If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.
Hosted by:
The Wartime Memories Project Website
is archived for preservation by the British Library
Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
- All Rights Reserved -We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.
