WILLIAM ATKINS

 

 

William Atkins was born at Pyrton in 1889, the second son of Robert Edmund Atkins, a cattleman from Great Haseley, and Elizabeth Hester Woodley from Long Wittenham. 

By 1901 Robert and Elizabeth had moved to Little Haseley with their four children Robert 14, William 12, Emily 7 and Alfred 5.  Eldest son Robert worked as a ‘nagman’ [horseman] and the three youngest children attended Great Haseley School.

The 1911 census return shows that Elizabeth had given birth to ten children, nine of whom were surviving.  Robert and Elizabeth had been married for twenty seven years. William gave his occupation as ‘horseman on a farm.’

William was one of the first to volunteer for army service.  In August 1914, at the army recruitment office in Oxford, he enlisted as a private in the 5th Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.  He was promoted to Lance Corporal and then, in September 1915, he was seriously wounded on the front line in France and spent over two months in hospital.  He was killed in action on 21st March 1918, the first day of ‘Operation Michael’, the last major offensive by the German army during World War One, and on the same day as Raymond Payne.

William Atkins is commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial, Ovillers La Boisselle, Somme, France, erected to the memory of those allied soldiers killed during ‘Operation Michael’.

William’s older brother Robert, of the 1st Battalion Canadian Infantry, Western Ontario Regiment, was killed in action on 26th April 1916 at Mount Sorrel, Ypres, Belgium.

Extract from Lives from the Haseley War Memorial

Jane Simcox