Pte 51584 William Gaade Peers

• Age: 19
• From: Bromborough, Cheshire
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 17th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: St Martin Calvaire Brit Cem
  Panel Ref: I.A.22

William Gaade Peers was born in Bromborough in 1897, the son of Henry Peers and his wife Edith Mary (nee Gaade) who were married in 1894 at St Mary, Birkenhead. Edith was the daughter of a Dutch mariner who had settled in Liverpool. William was baptised on the 11th July 1897.

A sister Marguerite Mary died in infancy in 1900

The 1901 Census shows the family living 6 The Rake, Bromborough. Henry is 28 and working as a house painter, his wife Edith is 29, the couple have two sons – Harry aged 5 and William aged 3. The family were all born in Birkenhead.

The 1911 census records the family at the same address, his father, Henry, is aged 38 and is still a house painter, Edith Mary is 39 years of age. They advised that they had been married for 16 years and have had 4 children, 3 of whom have survived. The couple have three sons declared in the household; Harry aged 15 is working as a clerk in a chemical works, William Gaade aged 13 is at school, as is 8 year old John Eric.

William enlisted in Liverpool and was serving with the 17th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 51584.

He was killed in action on 09th April 1917. This was the opening day of the Battle of Arras.

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they  were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen  - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19^th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20^th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10^th April.

Of the 17^th King’s  - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when  after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded.

William's death was reported in the Birkenhead News on the 28th April 1917 under the heading:

A FALLEN BROMBORO' HERO

Mr and Mrs Peers of the Rake, Bromborough, have been the recipients of the sad news announcing the death in action of their second son, Rifleman William Peers in his 20th year. In November 1915 he joined the 6th King's Liverpools and was drafted to France in July 1916. There he was attached to the 17th Liverpools, and had been in many struggles. All the inhabitants of Bromborough are deeply touched with the news of his death. Deceased was especially clever as an artist. He had indeed a very successful career in front of him had not the unfortunate happened. In a letter from his Captain (A. I. Draper) who is of local birth, the writer says- "I always took a keen interest in him, as I have lived all my life until lately at Bebington, and he was a boy of such sterling character and charm of nature that one was bound to love him, as I feel sure did everyone with whom he came in contact". The deceased's brother is at present serving "somewhere in France". 

William now rests at St. Martin Calvaire British Cemetery in France at plot I.A.22 where his headstone bears the epitaph:

"PEACE PERFECT PEACE WITH LOVED ONES FAR AWAY".

The village of St. Martin-sur-Cojeul was taken by the 30th Division on 9 April 1917. It was lost in March 1918 but retaken in the following August. St. Martin Calvaire British Cemetery was named from a calvary which was destroyed during the war. It was begun by units of the 30th Division in April 1917 and used until March 1918. Plot II was made in August and September 1918. The cemetery contains 228 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, five of them unidentified. There are also three German graves within the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

Soldiers Effects to father Henry, Pension to mother Edith Mary.

William is commemorated on the Bromborough Memorial.

His father died in 1936, and his mother died in 1963, aged 91.

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