Born on 12th August 1886 William was the second son of Thomas and Harriet Randall, of New Street, Shipston-on-Stour and was baptised on the 26th September.

On the 5th May 1890 William was enrolled into the Shipston Infants School. The family were noted as living in New Street, which is confirmed in the census of the following year.  On the 31st August 1893 Willie entered the Senior School, and whilst no specific date is given it is expected that he would have left around his fourteenth birthday in August 1900.

On the 20th August 1913 William married Annie Kirkaldy who lived next-door to Bertie Coe’s family in Telegraph Street. At the time of the marriage William was working as a Grocer’s Clerk, his father was a Groom and Annie’s father was a Carpenter.

William enlisted in Stratford in the July of 1916 and arrived in Mesopotamia with the 269th Siege Battery of the Royal Garrison Artillery in March 1917. Little is currently know about the Battery’s movements, as the war diary no longer exists.

Sadly William succumbed to the terrible conditions that both the British and Indian Armies suffered and died on the 17th July 1917. 

The Stratford Herald of the 31st August 1917 reported:

Mrs W. T. Randall of Swan Lane (also known as Swan Gutter) has received official intimation that her husband Gunner William Thomas Randall of the Royal Garrison Artillery has died in the Persian Gulf from the effects of the heat. Gunner Randall joined the forces in July last year having previously been a member of the clerical staff of Messrs Greenhill & Sons and he was drafted out to Mesopotamia in March. He was deservedly popular and the greatest sympathy is extended to his widow and parents.

William is buried at the Amara War Cemetery in Iraq and is remembered on both of the School Memorials and the Town Memorial.

From early on in the war Amara was a town that the British and Indian Armies used as a site for hospitals, the sick and wounded being brought in from the areas where the fighting was taking place. The cemetery is interesting in that it no longer contains any of the original gravestones, which would have been the standard Portland Stone gravestones.  In 1933 it was discovered that the high level of salt in the soil was slowly destroying the stones and so it was decided to remove them.  Inscribed panels listing the 4,621 buried men were built into a screen wall to replace them.

In the summer of 2017 William’s medals and death plaque were discovered, buried under a tree, in the garden of a house Annie Randall was known to have lived in.  The medals and plaque have been renovated by the local branch of the Royal British Legion and presented to William’s nearest relatives.

Mike Wells