Sergeant William Henry Butcher (1895-1988) was born in Amberley, Stroud, Gloucestershire, the youngest of four children of Emanuel Butcher, a market gardener, by his first wife, Ruth Elizabeth (née Fooks), who died in 1897. The family lived in Amberly in 1911, when Emanuel and his second wife, Louisa Annie (née May), had ten children at home. William was working in a sawmill.
William’s parents moved to Wickhamford in early 1918 when the younger children enrolled at Badsey Council School in April. William and his sister, Muriel Butcher, are mentioned in the Badsey Parish Magazine of July 1918, both being at home in Wickhamford on sick leave: “Sergeant W Butcher, son of Mr E Butcher of Wickhamford, has been home after being down with malaria in France. He had previously been twice wounded.” There is no surviving record of his service.
(William’s step-mother died in 1919 and his father in 1947. She is buried in Wickhamford Churchyard. He was cremated and his ashes scattered, as he did not wish for his wife's grave to be disturbed. Even so, a memorial stone to him was erected on his wife's grave.)
