Pte 27382 William Noel Malley

In 1901 the family is living at 11 Holdsworth Street, Kensington, Liverpool, with five children. His father has left the sea and is now a railway porter, William is 6. In the household is a visitor, Mary Prescott, a self employed sick nurse.

By 1911 they have moved to Knoclaid Road, Clubmoor, Old Swan. His father, 44, is a capastan (sic) man (winch machine) for the L.N.W. Railway, his mother is 48, Frances is 20, no occupation, Georgina, 18, works in the confectionery business, William is 16, a grocer’s assistant. Ellen is 14, John 11 and Lillian 9, are at school.

He enlisted in Liverpool joining the 17^th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 27382. The amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he served for nearly three years, enlisting in about April 1915.

He reached France on 29th December 1915 just after his 21st Birthday. He was killed in action on the 28^th March, 1918, during the German Spring Offensive.

The Battalion diary gives an insight into the events of the day:

28^th March 1918

FOLIES – MEZIERES – ROUVREL

10.00am Enemy attacked our immediate front but was driven off – Half an hour later enemy was seen in large numbers through ROUVROY to WARVILLERS. About 11 am orders were received that the Battalion would be relieved by 133^rd French Division. The relief was carried out shortly after noon, after a message had been received by telephone that the French were satisfied with the position and that we were to withdraw at once.  

4pm The enemy were then in BEAUFORT. The Battalion assembled at MEZIERES and marched to ROUVREL to billets arriving about 6.30pm.

His body was not recovered from the battlefield and his name is recorded on the Pozieres Memorial. 

The POZIERES MEMORIAL relates to the period of crisis in March and April 1918 when the Allied Fifth Army was driven back by overwhelming numbers across the former Somme battlefields, and the months that followed before the Advance to Victory, which began on 8 August 1918. The Memorial commemorates over 14,000 casualties of the United Kingdom and 300 of the South African Forces who have no known grave and who died on the Somme from 21 March to 7 August 1918.

The cemetery and memorial were designed by W.H. Cowlishaw, with sculpture by Laurence A. Turner. The memorial was unveiled by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien on 4 August 1930.

William was initially declared Missing on 28th March 1918. 

Miss J. Heidstrom, of 11 August Street, Bootle, contacted the International Red Cross but in a reply dated 01st July she was notified that they held no information on William. (Her brother Robert Heidstrom served in the 17th with William. He was wounded in action in November 1917 and died in 1923 aged 29.)

His father William received his son’s Army effects, including a War Gratuity of £16-10s.

The pension card in the name of his mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Jane Malley, at 6 Ludwig Road, Oakfield Road, Liverpool shows that a pension was refused, but often in cases of men declared Missing a pension was later awarded.

His mother died not long after William’s death, in January 1919, at the age of 56, and was buried in a public grave.

It is not known when his father died but his name drops off the electoral roll at 6 Ludwig Road after 1931-32.

Sadly, William has not been found on any memorial.