L/Cpl 29713 William Spencer

• Age: 22
• From: Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 20th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Henin Crucifix Cem
  Panel Ref: A.33

William Ernest Spencer was born in the June quarter of 1895 in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, the youngest son of Richard Spencer and his wife Sarah Ann (née Jones).  His father, from Walton, Liverpool, and his mother, from Chester, married in 1877 at All Souls, Liverpool and had 15 children, seven of whom died young. At the children’s baptisms in the 1880s his parents are shown living in Prescot Road and in Park View, and his father’s occupation given as carter or brewer’s carter.  William had older siblings Richard, Sarah, John, James, Frances, and Joseph, and a younger sister Gertrude. 

He was baptised with siblings Frances and Joseph in St. John the Evangelist in Knotty Ash on 15th February 1896, his parents’ residence Grey Horse, and his father listed as a brewer’s man. Grey Horse cottages stood near The Grey Horse Inn, 22 Prescot Road. 

At the time of the 1901 census the family are living at 69 Prescott Road with six children.  

His father, 44, is a carter (corn), his mother is 46.  William is 6. 

His father died at age 51 in 1908, when William was 13, the family then living at 17 Belfast Road. 

The 1911 census finds his widowed mother, 57, head of household at 22 Belfast Road, Old Swan (off Prescot Road). Joseph, 18, is a general labourer for a building contractor, William is 16, a fishmonger’s assistant, and Gertrude is 12. 

William enlisted in Liverpool as Private 29713, the amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he enlisted in about July 1916, and was promoted to Lance Corporal. He was serving with the 20th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment when he was killed in action on 09th April 1917, aged 22. This was the opening day of the Battle of Arras. 

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

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

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 now rests at Henin Crucifix Cemetery in France. 

Henin-sur-Cojeul was captured on 02nd April 1917, lost in March 1918 after an obstinate resistance by the 40th Division, and retaken on 24 August 1918 by the 52nd (Lowland) Division.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery is named from a calvary standing on the opposite side of the road. It was made by units of the 30th Division after the capture of the village in 1917.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery contains 61 burials and commemorations of the First World War. Two of the burials are unidentified and eight graves, destroyed in later fighting, are now represented by special memorials.

The cemetery was designed by G H Goldsmith.

Of the 61 burials and commemorations in this cemetery, 5 miles southeast of Arras; over half, 33, are from the King’s Liverpool Regiment, all but one of whom are Liverpool Pals. 

The CWGC Graves Registration form appears to show his date of death as 02nd April, later amended to the 09th. 

William’s name appeared in the list of K.L.R. Killed published in the Liverpool Daily Post & Mercury on 16th May 1917:

Spencer 29713 W. (Llangollen).  As no connection with Llangollen has been found, this may be an error. 

His Army effects and a War Gratuity of £8-10s went to his mother, who was awarded a pension of 12/6d a week. 

His brother James served in the Royal Garrison Artillery from March 1917, was hospitalized with influenza in July 1918 and was demobbed in early 1919. 

His mother died in 1923 aged 64, still living at 22 Belfast Road. 

William is commemorated on All Saints Church Screen, Stoneycroft.

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