Harold William's Story.
Harold William Pierpoint was born in Poulton in 1894, one of ten children born to Arnold Hugh (a gamekeeper) and Alice Pierpoint of Mere, Knutsford. Harold worked as a mechanic.
He enlisted in the 1/6th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment, becoming Private no. 251047.
Harold was killed in action on the 5th September 1917, when he was hit by a shell while working with a ration party, bringing food up to the front-line trenches
On that fateful day:
The Battalion war Diary states
'3/4th TORONTO CAMP
While in these support positions very heavy shelling was experienced, particularly by A + C Coys. At night time, causing very heavy casualties, particularly amongst working parties carrying rations + materials and owing to the wretched condition of the ground and the non-existence of trenches due to heavy shell fire, very little protection was available and the men were living under very poor conditions.'
A diary entry from Robert Darbyshire (who was with Harold section) goes some way to say what was happening:
5th September 1917
Nothing much doing until about noon when Jerry started to put a barrage on our trench most awful. Dick Griffiths with his section, 9 altogether, got a 5.9 shell to themselves and out of the 9 only 2 were living when we were able to get to them and one of them had both his legs blown off. The other was wounded in 40 places. Every bone in Carl Ashleys body was broken. Nick Carter had a hole in his stomach as big as a dinner plate. Dick had the left half of his face, and left shoulder and arm blown clean off and was unrecognisable except for the two stripes on his arm. A more ghastly sight I never saw and dont want to see again. This happened about 1pm and Jerry was still dropping shells into our trench however the shelling slackened off until about 9pm when he opened out again for 15 minutes.
So up to our report going in at midnight we had 1 officer, 2 N.C.O.s and 30 men killed or wounded.
Researched and compiled by Tony Davies