Pte 35337 George Walker

• Age: 24
• From: Bolton, Lancs
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 20th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Henin Crucifix Cem
  Panel Ref: Sp.Mem.4

George was born in Bolton in July 1892 the son of Edward Walker and his wife Sarah Ann (nee Hunter) who were married in 1886 at St Michael's Church, Great Lever, Bolton. He was baptised on 31st August 1892 at St Mark's Church, Bolton Le Moors.

The 1901 Census finds the family living at 199 Lever Street, Bolton. George is 8 years of age and is living with his parents and two elder siblings. His father, Edward, is a painter and decorator born in Bolton in 1863, whilst his mother was born in Bolton in 1862. His two siblings were also born in Bolton and they are recorded as; Ernest  an apprentice painter born in 1888 and Alice Jane born in 1891. 

His father died, aged 40, in the March quarter of 1903.

His mother died aged 45 in the June quarter of 1906.       

On the 1911 Census George is shown as a yarn side piercer in cotton mill, living with sister and brother at 157 Holland Street, Bolton. His brother is 23 and a house painter and decorator and his sister is 20 and a thread reeler.

George enlisted in Bolton on 08th February 1916 and was serving with the 20th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 35337 when he was killed in action, aged 24, on 09th April 1917  which 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.

George now rests at Henin Crucifix Cemetery, France with a Special Memorial headstone which contains the inscription at the top "Known to be buried in this Cemetery" and contains an epitaph which reads:

“THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT”

The epitaph comes from Ecclesiasticus 44 verse 13 and was chosen by Rudyard Kipling. These headstones commemorate casualties whose graves in a cemetery were destroyed or who were known to buried in the cemetery but the exact whereabouts within the cemetery were not recorded. 

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.

This cemetery, five miles southeast of Arras, contains 61 WW1 burials and commemorations.  Of the 59 identified burials, over half, 33, are from the King’s Liverpool Regiment, all but one of whom are Liverpool Pals.

His death was reported in the Bolton Journal of 04th May 1917 

"Pte. Geo. Walker, King's (Liverpool) Regt., one of Messrs. Barlow and Jones' spinners, was killed on April 9th. Deceased was 24 years of age, and prior to enlisting on February 8th,1916, lived with his brother at 375, Derby-st.,Bolton."

Soldiers Effects to sister-in-law Emily Walker/Blyth (Ernest's wife), no Pension record found.  

George is commemorated on the following Memorials:

Bolton War Memorial on Victoria Square 

Bolton County Borough Roll of Honour and St Mark's Church, Bolton.