Campden Voices 

by Paul R. Hughes, 03 September, 2006

William Henry Franklin was a regular soldier when war was declared in 1914. He was one of the first men from Chipping Campden to arrive in France to face the onslaught of the German army. Despite being only 19 years of age he had already served with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment for over four years. Bill, as he was always called, arrived in France on 22nd August 1914 as Private 1674 Bill Franklin, “B” company, 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was an “Old Contemptible”.
Bill was to serve continuously on the Western Front for the next three years. In December 1916 he transferred to the Machine Gun Corps and it was with this new unit that he was to be “Mentioned in Despatches” in 1917 for his excellent service at the front.

The Third Battle of Ypres (also known as The Battle of Passchendaele) began in July 1917 and it was during the fighting of this prolonged battle that Bill was to receive a gunshot wound to his chest that would eventually lead to his discharge from the army. Bill was wounded on 4th October 1917 and was evacuated to hospital at Rouen in France. Luckily for Bill this was a “Blighty Wound”. After lengthy spells in hospital in England he was eventually discharged from the army as “no longer fit for active service” in September 1918.
Bill was the son of William Henry and Ellen Franklin. His father was also a regular soldier with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. In 1899 he was sent to South Africa to serve in the Boer War. He had only been there for a few weeks when he caught dysentery and died in February 1900. Bill was only five at the time and he was living with his mother in an army home in Liverpool. Bill was to spend the next nine years of his life at an orphanage in Toxteth, Liverpool. His mother would soon meet Thomas Cross who would become her second husband. Thomas would serve in the Somerset Light Infantry during the 1914-18 war. Their son Frederick Cross was killed in action in Normandy in 1944.
At the age of 15 years and 361 days Bill enlisted into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a drummer boy (musician) in September 1910. The next four years were to be spent serving in Great Britain. Bill’s conduct as a boy at the orphanage and as a young man in the army was always recorded as “very good” but he did receive two separate punishments of five days confined to barracks for “smoking while on boy service” and having a “dirty bugle on parade”.
After his discharge from the army Bill returned to Chipping Campden where he married Lucy Elizabeth Warren at St Catharine’s Church in 1921. The rest of his life was spent living and working in the town where he was a postman and then a barber. During the 1914-18 war Bill had been badly affected by mustard gas on his left arm/hand. This made working as a barber hard but Bill was not one to let these things stop him. He was always a very hard working, determined man.
Bill died on 16th November 1963 aged 69. His wife died eight years later in 1971. They are buried together at St Catharine’s Catholic Churchyard in Chipping Campden.