(William “Willie” Burgess was the younger brother of Harry Burgess, featured in “Harry Burgess & Mary Eliz Hollick” under "Chrons – South Aust")
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# 22204 Cpl William Burgess
The Duke of Cornwall’s Light
Infantry
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Willie Burgess was born in February 1891 in Garston St in Shepton Mallet Somerset, the youngest child of John Burgess 29, a local stone mason, and Mary his wife, 36. His siblings were then Ada 8, Frank 6, Harry 2, and Edith 1.
Willie and his brother Harry were good mates, growing up and doing their
schooling in the town, and as young men were often found in their favourite
watering hole “The Kings Arms” at the end of the street.
Family history (from
Willie’s two daughters) has it that in 1908 Willie “...went out to buy a pound
of salt one day when he was 17 and never came home, walking over to Taunton where
he joined The Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry.” It’s also said that “...he
really wanted to join the Navy, but he was too short and they wouldn’t take
him, so he joined the Army instead.”
The reality is that only the Somerset Light Infantry is based in Taunton
(where his two brothers later joined up), while the Duke of Cornwall’s base is down
in Bodmin. So did he actually go to Portsmouth to join the Navy (about 100
miles, so maybe he didn’t walk!), and when rejected settled for the nearest
Army base, being either The Devonshire Regiment at Exeter, or (a bit closer) the
Cornwall’s?
Whatever the truth, by April 1911 Willie, now 21, was in the St George
Barracks Hospital at Gravesend (no idea why), but in April 1913, along with the
rest of the 1st Battalion of The Cornwall’s, he was posted to the Curragh
Barracks in Co Kildare, then the main base for the British Army in Ireland.
Irish-British politics were coming to a head at this time, and Willie
would’ve felt the effects of the so-called “Curragh Mutiny” in March 1914, when
many senior officers resigned to avoid disobeying orders from Westminster as,
according to his daughters, and going by the address to him on a post card from
his brother Harry in April 1914, to the “Officers Mess”, Willie – now a
corporal - was an orderly for the officers, or maybe even a “batman”.
In August 1914, with the declaration of war, Willie and the 1st
Battalion were deployed directly from Britain to the Western Front, and remained
there for the rest of his war, battle after battle – La Cateau, Marne,
Messines, (he was wounded for the first time in Sept 1916), Aisne, Ypres, and
finally for Willie, the Arras campaign through the middle of 1917, when again
he was wounded, this time badly, to be classified “392 (xvi)”.
Para 392
(xvi) in Kings Regulations for the Army states - “No longer physically fit for
war service.. (and if Abroad).. “Sent home for discharge.” Willie’s discharge
came on the 7th Sept 1917.
His daughters said that their father finished up with no less than
seven bayonet wounds, and had to be tended all the rest of his life with
special dressings, but despite this, he could never get a war pension, because
it was deemed that his wounds weren’t severe enough!
Late in 1921,
back home in Shepton Mallet, Willie married Rosina Carter, a domestic servant,
the daughter of a local quarryman, and in time they had two girls, the four of
them living in Garston St in the town for most of their lives, with Willie also
working as a quarryman, but continually affected by his war wounds.
Right
through the late 20’s, and the 1930’s, Willie always kept in touch with his
brother Harry, who had emigrated to Adelaide, only to be stranded there by the
Depression and then WW II. But each week Willie faithfully took out a Pools
ticket, swearing that if he ever won he would bring Harry and his family “back
home”.
His
daughters told the story that during the second war their father, with bitter
memories of his own war, always kept a revolver and several bullets in the
house, and swore that if the Germans ever invaded he would not allow his girls
to fall into their hands.
His wife Rosina tended his wounds – a constant need as he got older - right through until her death in early 1962, and for the next five years this task was taken over by his daughters, until his own death in 1967. Today Willie and Rosina are buried together in the Shepton Mallet cemetery, overlooking their town.
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