Willie Henry RICHARDSON

9482, Private. b. 1882, Clayton d. Thu. 1st May 1917 (aged 34).

One of the ‘veterans’ to sign up from Clayton, Willie had joined the Northumberland Fusiliers in late 1914 aged 31. Willie had grown up in Lidget Terrace since childhood and was employed at John Murgatroyd & Sons also of Clayton. Previously he had also been a stone sawyer and is listed as this in the 1901 census. He lived with his mother (a Mrs Mitchell) until enlisting and shortly after he left for France she moved to 4, Scholemoor Lane, Lidget Green.

Willie arrived in France with this body of men in the middle of 1915 and managed to survive a stint of nearly a year until he, along with tens of thousands of other men, was wounded on 1st July 1916.

He was sent quickly to hospital in England before being returned to France in late 1916. On his arrival, Willie was sent to the Machine Gun Corps where he re-trained as part of a team of six whom operated the belt-fed Lewis machine guns. He joined the 92nd Company at the end of this training and spent six months with this group until his death. This happened when a shell dropped directly in front of their team while they were trying to set the machine gun up in no-mans land to prevent a German attack. It killed all six of them instantaneously.

At this stage during the war, the Allies were in full flow of the Battle of Arras, which was essentially a series of large scale skirmishes as opposed to one large battle. Two days after Willie’s death, the British launched a large offensive on the area known as Oppy Wood, with many casualties being inflicted on both sides.

Willie is buried at Orchard Dump Cemetery, Arleux-En-Gohelle, Pas De Calais, France. His headstone is inscribed “Gone but not forgotten”.