Walter, born in Melton on 23rd December 1894, was the youngest son of Walter and Emma. In 1911, he was working as an errand boy and living in the family home on Hackney Terrace.
On 7th December 1914, Walter gave up his job as a gardener and enlisted in the Royal Garrison Artillery. Initially, he was posted to No. 4 Depot Royal Garrison Artillery, based in Great Yarmouth, where he stayed until March 1915 when he was sent to join the 36th Siege Battery RGA for training in Gosport, Hampshire. In May, the Battery moved to Ash Meadows in Taunton, Somerset.
On 25th September, the Battery loaded their four, 8-inch Howitzers and other heavy equipment onto the SS Twickenham at Avonmouth on the Bristol Channel. The men travelled overland to Southampton, meeting their guns there. On the 27th September, Walter and his colleagues boarded the SS Golden Eagle for the journey across the Channel to Boulogne in France. Upon arrival at the Somme, the 36th Siege Battery was split, with two guns based at Pommier and the other two at Berles-au-Bois. Both teams were later reunited in June 1916 at Englebelmer, but with only three guns—one had been handed over to the 77th Siege Battery.
On 26th June, Walter’s Battery commenced a period of sustained firing onto the German forward and rear lines around Serre, a barrage in preparation for the Battle of the Somme, on 1st July 1916. The 36th Siege Battery war diary gives the number of shells fired between the 25th June and the 2nd July as three-thousand, six hundred and twenty-eight, roughly one hundred and seventy rounds per gun per day. Between 15:00 and 18:30 on the 26th June, the three howitzers of the Battery fired one hundred and fifty-seven rounds between them; one round every four minutes. Each shell weighed two hundred pounds, plus the charge to propel it. It took a team of ten men to load and fire each gun.
Walter served with the 36th Siege Battery throughout the war, returning to the UK on leave on three occasions, January and December 1917 and then for two weeks from 26th November 1918 after the Armistice had been declared. The war ended for Walter on 19th March 1919, when he was discharged from the army. For his war service, Walter received the 1915 Star and the British War and Victory Medals. In 1922, Walter married Edith Mary Adams from Woodbridge. By 1939 he was working as a nursery gardener and living with his wife and son, Stanley, in Victoria Road, Woodbridge. He died in 1943.
Officers and N.C.O.s of the 36th Siege Battery on the eve of their departure to France