Notes
Recovered 21.08.2023 from https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/927024/william-james-battrick/
PRIVATE WILLIAM JAMES BATTRICK
Service Number: 3/7547
Dorsetshire Regiment 1st Bn.
Date of Death 05 May 1915 Age 37 years old
Buried YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL Panel 37. Belgium
Son of the late Edmund and Mary Jane Battrick
Private WILLIAM JAMES BATTRICK (Piddletrenthide). 1st Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment.
William James Battrick was born in Corfe Mullen in 1877 or 1878, but in 1914 his parents, Edmund and Mary Jane Battrick were living at Doles Ash, Piddletrenthide. He had a brother, Frederick Charles.
Battrick was a reservist - a time served regular soldier who was liable to be recalled to the colours in times of national emergency. He would have been mobilised on 4th August 1914 and was sent to Victoria Barracks, Belfast, where the 1st Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment were being equipped. He arrived in France with a draft on 27th January 1915.
On 30th April the 1st Dorsets went into the front line at Hill 60 to the south-east of Ypres. In the early evening of the next day the Germans launched a gas attack against them. Gas was a very new weapon, having made its appearance on the Western Front only eight days before. Within a few minutes of the gas cloud reaching the Dorsets' trenches, men were being asphyxiated, choking to death or crawling away to die.
Some soldiers under a young lieutenant jumped onto the parapet above the gas and managed to hold off the German attack but the Battalion had been so weakened they went into reserve trenches. On 5th May, at 9.00 in the morning, the Germans made another gas attack and got into some of the British trenches. The 1st Dorsets, together with the 1st Cheshires, were ordered up to the front line where there followed some hours of confused fighting.
In that confusion James Battrick was killed. His body was never found and his name appears on the huge Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ypres; it is to 54,896 men killed on the Ypres Salient who have no known grave. At the age of 37, James Battrick was the oldest Piddletrenthide man who died in the War.
The 1st Dorsets were relieved the day after this appalling gas attack. They had gone into the line on 30th April some 800 strong. They came out on 6th May with 173 men. While not all these losses would have been killed (casualty figures included killed, wounded and missing), the number represents a terrible toll in suffering.
The Battrick family had another loss in the Second World War. Frederick Charles, the brother of James, had a son, Harry James who served as a private in A Company of the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. On Sunday 17th September 1944 this was one of the airborne battalions which dropped at Arnhem, having flown from Saltby in Lincolnshire.
http://www.piddlevalley.info/history_great_war.php#6
The 2nd Battalion spearheaded the advance into Arnhem. Their objectives were to seize and hold both ends of three bridges over the River Rhine. In the event, they managed to hold only the north end of the famous road bridge. They held it against ferocious German attacks, including attacks by SS Panzer troops, until the morning of Thursday 21st September, when their resistance ceased. Harry Battrick was killed on or about this date. He was 26 years old and is buried in Oosterbeek War Cemetery at Arnhem.