Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Bill Walmsley survived three years on the Western Front before he was taken prisoner and died in captivity two weeks before hostilities ended. He was born in Horton, Bradford on 27th July 1890, the second child and only son of Lister and Caroline Walmsley. Lister was born in Otley, the son of a
groom. He must have been a remarkable man, qualities his son inherited. At sixteen Lister was a spinner in Burley-in-Wharfedale, next a spinner’s clerk in Horton, then the manager of a worsted spinning mill by the early 1880s. He occupied this position until his death in 1920 when he left effects valued at £21,000 (£1 million in 2018 values). In 1884 he married Caroline Haley from Timble. By 1911 the family lived in a substantial house on Manningham Lane close to the gates of Lister Park.
Bill was ten in 1900 when he started at Bradford Grammar School on the modern side. He performed so well in his first year in the senior school (1902-3) that he was promoted from the Second to the Fourth form. In the latter he struggled in the Arts subjects, but through all six years at the School he came near the top in Maths. In his final year (1906) he played as a batsman for the School second cricket XI and for Greens house first XI. He left school when he was sixteen to work as a wool-sorter for Christopher Waud & Co., a Bradford alpaca spinning company (which was almost certainly his father’s employer). Bill’s regimental number, 221, indicates that in his spare time he was a volunteer in the Territorial Force, created in 1908, serving in the 6th Battalion based at Belle Vue Barracks near his family home. He was probably on the strength of ‘H’ Company together with some eighty more Old Bradfordians.
When the war broke out in August 1914, Bill Walmsley was the sort of experienced soldier
needed to train new recruits. He took the Imperial Service Obligation to serve overseas and went to France with the battalion on 15th April 1915 as a sergeant in ‘C’ Company (into which ‘H’ Company had merged). When the Company Sergeant-Major H. Barker was wounded in July, Colonel Wade (O.B.) promoted Walmsley to replace him. Another Old Bradfordian later described Bill thus: ‘During the whole war he had wielded a tremendous influence in the Battalion. As one of the Battalion “characters” it is impossible to do justice … to his racy humour, picturesque language, unfailing cheerfulness and “grit”. Off parade he was familiar with his men, and knew them by their Christian names. On parade and in action he was treated with a respect which spoke volumes as to his character and leadership. He refused several offers of a commission, as he preferred to stay with his Company and “take his luck
with the boys!”’
Walmsley served through five difficult months in the Ypres Salient at the end of 1915 and then on the Somme front for much of 1916. His was one of two companies of the 6th to attempt to advance uphill against the fortified village of Thiepval on the afternoon of 1st July. For his conduct on that day he was awarded the French Croix de Guerre. He also
survived the attack in thick mud on Bellevue Spur, near Passchendaele, on 9th October 1917. On 25th April 1918, ‘C’ Company was in support in the Grand Bois just north of Wytschaete. After a ‘tremendous bombardment’ it was attacked by German storm troops and was quickly overrun. Captain G. Sanders V.C. the Company commander, was last seen on a pill box firing his revolver until he was wounded. He was taken prisoner with Walmsley. In June Bill’s parents received a postcard stating that he was unwounded. He was held in Cottbus prisoner of war camp, seventy miles south-west of Berlin, where the conditions were poor. He died of a lung infection, perhaps the result of influenza. His remains were later moved to a large British cemetery near Potsdam.'