William's Story.
Born in 1895, William was the eldest son of John Henry and Mary Ann Jane Benson, of 10 Edgmond Street, Wallasey. In 1911 the family lived at 23 Palermo Street, Seacombe. John Henry worked as an iron turner, William age 16, was working as a grocer’s errand boy.
His siblings at the time were, Charles Joseph 14, Beatrice 11, George Edward 8, Mary 5, and John 2. It is believed that John and Mary had at least one more child, Francis born in June 1911.
William, serving with the 13th battalion Cheshire Regiment went to France 25 September 1915 and was killed in action on 7 July 1916, just a week into the Battle of the Somme, in La Boisselle.
Objectives were to
(1) straighten points 39, 79, 99, 29, 38
(2) capture the line from points 67, through 65, 85, 84, 95, 93 to 42.
(3) capture from 24 to 75
On the 6 July 1916, the battalion occupied the trenches in the village of La Boisselle on Friday the 7 they attacked the war diary reads:
Over the parapet at 8.5am after suffering severe casualties we reached our objective and consolidated. A number of prisoners and war material fell into our hands, Casualties on this day very heavy, 18 officers and 243 other ranks.
The brigade diary confirms that at 8.20am the 13th Cheshires had gained their 1st objective, at 8.55am the 9 Loyal North Lancs had gained their first objective and were pushing on in conjunction with the 13 Cheshire’s. The Cheshire’s were unable to hold on to their objective except for a small portion on the right where they joined hands with the Loyal North Lancs. The chief reason for this was because the enemy trenches in the centre of the Cheshire’s objective had been blown out of all recognition.
The 2nd Royal Irish Rifles and 1½ companies of the 11 Lancs Fusiliers were sent forward to consolidate position 1. The time came for advancing to the second objective (10am) there were so few officers and NCOs left to direct operations that the troops were not reorganised in time to carry forward the advance, consequently the brigade consolidated on this objective.