Percy WILLIAMS (1878-?)

Corporal Percy Williams (1878-?) was a fellow soldier with George Sladden in the 1/15th Battalion London Regiment (Prince of Wales’ Own Civil Service Rifles).

Percy Williams was born at Hampstead, Middlesex, on 17th April 1878, the son of Harry Williams, a lawyer’s clerk, and his wife, Caroline (née Moore).  In 1881, Percy was living with his mother in the home of his maternal grandparents in Marylebone.  At the time of the 1901 census, Percy was living alone in Kensington working as a grocer.

Percy married Lily Margaret Bale on 24th June 1906 at Christ Church, West Green, Middlesex.  Percy was then working as a grocer.  By the time of Lilian’s birth a year later he was an agent.

They had four children, Lilian Marguerite Rose (1907), Percy F (1910), Stanley Edward (1913) and Elsie M J (1915).  At the time of the 1911 census, Percy was working as Assistant Secretary for a Sick Benefit Society and they lived at 51 Dunloe Avenue, Tottenham.

It is not known when Percy Williams arrived in France with the Civil Service Rifles but he was certainly working with George Sladden by 1916.  George worked closely with Williams, Banks and Pattison in the transport section.  In a letter of 28th November 1916, George wrote to his sister, Kathleen, describing a typical day, and said this of his colleague:

The Sergeant messes with his three semi-Corporals - Banks, Pattison and Percy Williams, the farrier.  Percy is the most important member of the Mess and he merits description.  Age 37; profession, employee of NH Insurance; appearance, dissipated; character, exemplary, a vegetarian, a teetotaller and a non-smoker, yet he will eat vegetables or bread soaked in gravy, will drink champagne because he likes it, or other things occasionally if he is with a stranger who wants to drink and to whom Percy does not want to explain that he is TT and therefore etc etc, and will smoke a cigar if it is offered him.  And lately he has smoked one pipe per day to see whether it is a habit worth acquiring.  In short, a highly original, independent and wholly likeable man.  Being, in Army parlance, a "tradesman", he does not attend parades.  His job is to do all shoeing as the necessity for it arises.  The conjunction of this fact and a Primus stove produces the happiest consequence for the Sergeant's Mess.  Percy acts as a sort of supplementary cook for us:  fries bread in the bacon fat to eat with the bacon at breakfast, makes toast if we have a coke brazier burning in cold weather, as at present; and almost always turns out something hot for supper.  So skilful has our long campaign made him at cooking and foraging that he makes our existence at least three times as comfortable as it used to when we were inexperienced.  If there is anything cookable about, Percy will have it; he can turn out something appetising in the most hopeless of surroundings; and he can smell paraffin (the breath of life of a Primus and no means easy to find here) miles away.

Soon after the start of the Second World War, Lily was living in Lewes, Sussex, with Percy’s widowed mother, Caroline, whilst Percy was still in London at their home, 79 Handsworth Road, Tottenham, working as a Friendly Society Secretary.

Lily died at St Austell, Cornwall, in June 1972.  It is not known when Percy died.