Corporal William GARNER

Northamptonshire Regiment 9589

Although, William Alfred Garner was born in Deeping St James on 6^th April 1894, to parents Alfred James Garner and Annie Jane Wells who had married in 1893, he appeared on Woodnewton’s Roll of Honour.   When he joined the Army on 13^th August 1914, he must have used his Woodnewton address for his military records

William moved to Woodnewton sometime before the 1911 census was taken as he is shown living with the Wells family and working for his mother’s brother, Thomas Wells who owned and ran the successful saddlery in the village.   If he left school at the age of 14, he would have started his apprenticeship as a harness maker around 1909. 

It has been very difficult to find any paperwork online relating to William’s short time with the 1^st Batalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment, but there is a reference to the injuries he suffered in France in the booklet , ‘Zeppelin over Yarwell’₁. These are some of the  details of what he wrote later – He ‘sends tidings of a terrible experience, having lost an eye, a leg and being wounded in nearly 30 places’.  He stated ‘that a shell exploded under his nose and half stunned him. His left arm was smashed at the wrist, another bullet lodged in his elbow, his right eye had ‘gone west’ and a lump of iron in his face smashed his jaw bone”. He received ‘nine or ten wounds in the right thigh, and my left leg has gone altogether, it’s in France somewhere, so you will see that I have finished with the service.   My small book saved a bullet going through my heart’. 

Corporal Garner advises a comrade who is still at the front thus, ‘if you take my tip you will keep away from all shrapnel, it is very unhealthy. I have had seven operations and may have some more yet through it’.

On reading the account of Corporal Garner Queen Mary wrote that it was ‘with much interest and she is glad to hear that he is so brave and patient, notwithstanding his many wounds, The Queen deeply sympathises with Corporal Garner’s condition’.

William was discharged on 1^st June 1915, and for his part that he played and suffered in the war, one of the medals he received was the 1914 Star, also known as the Mons Star.₂

The next record we have of William is the 1921 census and he is found living with his parents and siblings at 8 Marlborough Road in Camberwell.  His employment is listed as a Pensions Clerk, working for the Ministry of Pensions at Alexandra Palace.  When William married Grace Olive Sansom on 7^th August 1922, at the parish church of Camberwell, their address at the time was 73 Linnell Road.

By the time the 1939 register was taken, William and Grace were living at Manor Way, Mitcham, with their daughter Grace.  William was still employed by the Ministry of Pensions.

William died in Ramsgate on 5^th August 1979.

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