This article is derived from a study I made for a private client in 2020. It examined the life and military service of William John Garner, a miner; a married man with children. When he attested in 1915 he lived in Pengam, a mining village straddling the South Wales border of Monmouthshire and Glamorgan. He was mobilised in January 1916 and became Sapper 146105 of the Tunnelling Companies of the Corps of Royal Engineers. William went to France with a reinforcement draft in February 1916 and was posted to 252nd Tunnelling Company. He was taken prisoner of war, unwounded, in the action described below. He was one of two men of the company to be reported missing: sadly, the other man, Sapper 157716 John Robert Magnall, had been killed. He has no known grave and is commemorated at the Louverval Memorial near Cambrai.
A photograph, said to be of William, was uploaded to Ancestry by user “noreendennis1”.
252nd Tunnelling Company RE before 20 November 1917
This unit was one of the second wave of tunnelling companies to be formed and was established at Rouen in October 1915. It was quickly moved to the Somme sector which the British had recently taken over from their French allies. The company worked in the area facing the high ground at Beaumont-Hamel and is notable for the work that resulted in the explosion of the great mine below Hawthorn Redoubt at the commencement of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. The crater resulting from this explosion still exists and contemporary film features in almost all documentary TV programmes on the subject of the Great War.
The company remained within the same sector until March 1917, when it was finally ordered northwards towards Arras. It sustained serious casualties during the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in April 1917, and was still broadly in the same area by November of that year.
20 November 1917
Six officers and 40 men of the company, who had volunteered for the task, were sent to 9th Infantry Brigade of 3rd Division during the night 19-20 November. They were divided into two parties each of three officers and 20 men and instructed that they were to work with the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers in a large scale attack taking place in the morning. Their role was to enter captured enemy trenches, to locate dugouts and any mines or other hazards. The attack was taking place at the same time as the British Third Army launched a major offensive, now known as the Battle of Cambrai. The 3rd Division was situated just outside the area of the offensive and is not officially recognised as participating in it as far as battle honours are concerned.
The war diary of the headquarters staff of 9th Infantry Brigade describes the plan of attack and subsequent events in detail.
The narrative of the attack informs us that one of the Tunnelling Company parties went out and lay in no man’s land to await the attack; the other was behind it in support trenches. The attack was assisted by a heavy barrage of smoke, poison gas and lachrymatory gas, meaning that the man advanced while wearing anti-gas respirators. They would attack behind an artillery and machine gun barrage. As soon as the infantry had gained Bovis Trench, the tunnellers would advance to carry out their allotted work. The attack began at 6.20am on 20 November 1917.
The 1st Northumberland Fusiliers met some opposition on their right, and lost two officers on the left, but reached their objective. There were concerns on the left, for the position was overlooked from slightly higher ground and there was no good field of fire they could use to halt any enemy counter-attack.
The Germans did begin a counter-attack at 3.25pm. At 4pm it also began on the left, driving the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers back. In turn, the battalion mounted an attack to recapture it but it was not successful: “it is feared that all of those of the counter attacking platoons were either killed or taken prisoner”.
It is not possible to be certain of exactly when, where and how William John Garner fell into enemy hands but it seems reasonably certain that it was in that left-hand part of the battalion’s front and during the enemy counter-attack.
Footnote
On 17 December 1917 William’s wife Eleanor was officially informed that he was missing, but it is possible that she had already received unofficial word from his company. This would naturally be the start of a period of great anxiety but it appears that confirmation that William had been taken as a prisoner of war came through remarkably quickly: he was named as such in the War Office casualty list of 18 January 1918, suggesting that this knowledge had been gained via the Red Cross at least by the end of December. Arrangements began to be made for financial support for Eleanor via the “Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation”.
Men taken prisoner at Bullecourt were usually routed at first to the railhead at Cambrai and then moved into Germany. Red Cross records suggest that William was taken to the POW camps “Münster II” and then “Friedrichsfeld”.
William arrived back in England, landing from the ship “Posto” at Hull on 22 November 1918, a fraction ove a year after his capture near Bullecourt.