World War I Soldiers

This topic gives biographies of some of the "Wateringbury" soldiers (plus sailors and airmen) who served in World War I. It is intended to eventually cover all those who are recorded on the village memorial as well as some Wateringbury born people, such as Arthur Ongley and Augustus Pettet, who did not make it onto the war memorial as they had left the village prior top the war. I also hope to add some of the very many soldiers, sailors and airmen who served but who survived the war, but the sheer numbers of those will make it impossible to be comprehensive: the Wateringbury School War Memorial records 36 killed and 211 surviving.

The bios are of varying length reflecting the availability of sources which differs greatly by person. Find My Past has been used for census and military career details. Village sources are principally the Parish magazine and School logs. War related sources include Battalion War Dairies held at the National archives and Captain C.T. Atkinson's book "The Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment". Photos are available in only a few cases and as they come from the Kent Messenger are of poor quality with the exception of the photo of Lieut. Henry Bingham Stevens kindly provided by Malvern School. Kent Messenger articles are sometimes useful. These sources are only all present in a few cases as they are for Robert Buss who gets, therefore, more extensive coverage than others and if you only want to read one I would recommend his.

Thanks must go to Dail Whiting for her two very accurate booklets on School War Memorial and Church War Memorial. I hope that the additional information given in these biographies, often the military context of their deaths, justifies the effort involved. I have, however, in all cases done my own research and therefore take responsibility for any inaccuracies other than those in the original source material.

The bios include the following on the village memorial who died during the Somme Offensive in 1916: William Butchers (1/7/16); Frederick Latter (3/7/16); Frederick Adams (22/7/16); George Datlen (17/8/16); George Pearce (18/11/16), Albert Herbert (3/9/16), William Cowlard (29/9/16) and Charles Winter (13/11/16). Also killed during the Somme Offensive and on the school memorial were Lewis Newman (27/9/16), William Larkin (10/10/16) and Thomas Weller (15/9/16).