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Pte. William Thomas Riley Burfield
British Army 6th Btn., D Coy. Somerset Light Infantry
from:43 Townsend, Montacute, Somerset
William Burfield was born on 1st of October 1877 in Blaenavon in Wales, but moved to Taunton (and later Yeovil) as a boy with his family. In 1903 he married (Florence) Ethel Hockey in Norton-sub-Hamden and they had five children: Wilfred b.1903, Daisy b.1906, Leslie b.1910, Nora b.1914 and (Stanley) Norman b.1919.
William was a painter and decorator by trade and signed up for the Yeovil Territorials before WW1 started. The Yeovil Territorials were incorporated into the 6th Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry when war broke out and, despite already being 37 years old, William joined up (he may have lied about his age and claimed to be 34 in 1914 and not 37 as he really was). William was a very fit man for his age and he first saw action in France in August 1915 in D company, and he fought on the Western front for two years before being invalided out of the Somerset Light Infantry in August 1917 at Ypres at the age of 39.
Thereafter he served out his time in the Labour Corps before returning home to Montacute where he died of pneumonia on 1st March 1921, aged just 43. According to his son Wilfred, William's lungs were damaged in the Great War (presumably by gas) and this may have been a contributory factor in his death at what was a relatively young age.
