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CORPORAL WILLIAM ADAMS (1892-1918)

William Adams was born in Broadway in 1892, one of eight children, the son of local thatcher John Adams and his wife Mary who lived at The Pound. William worked as a brass fitter in a Nobbin net lace factory in Chard. In 1911 he was living at home in Broadway with his parents, two older brothers, James and Charles, and a younger brother Edward and sister Mabel. 

Aged 21 when war was declared in 1914, William enlisted and joined the Royal Engineers, 7th Wireless Park, attached to the 1st Signals Squad. Wiiliam was posted to France and Flanders where he was killed on 29th October 1918, just two weeks before Armistice was declared.  He is buried in the St Sever Cemetery Extension in Rouen, where many allied service personnel were buried following hospitalisation on the southern outskirts of Rouen. 

GUNNER WILLIAM THOMAS EDRESS BISHOP (1894-1915)

William Thomas Edress Bishop was born in Combe St Nicholas in 1894. His father Cornelius was a stonemason and in the 1911 census Thomas is working as a labourer for his father, sharing a house in Broadway village with his grandmother Rosina and mother Eva. He had three younger sisters, Elsie, Edith and Ellen, and a younger brother Francis.

Aged 19 when war was declared in 1914, he became a Gunner in the Royal Field Artillery joining A Battery of the 48th Brigade. The 48th served as divisional artillery with 14th (Light) division formed as part of Kitchener’s First New Army. After training, they proceeded to France. The Division fought in the Action of Hooge, being the first division to be attacked by flamethrowers.  

On 19th July 1915 the Germans held Hooge Chateau while the British held the stables with only 70-150 yards of no man’s land separating the forces. On 22nd July the 14th Light Division attacked north of the new front line, at Railway Wood, but lacking surprise the attack failed. Gunner Bishop was killed on 27th July 1915 and his cited on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.

LANCE CORPORAL GEORGE COLES (1897-1917)

George Coles was born in West Hatch in Somerset. He was an apprentice to his father Joseph, a carpenter, and lived with him and his stepmother Elizabeth in South Street, Broadway. George enlisted in Taunton and was posted to the 13th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards). After training in Aldershot, the Green Howards joined the 121st Brigade, 40th Division, fighting in the Arras Sector at the first battle of Baupaume on the Somme. 

On 21st March 1918, artillery bombardment began on 0435, south west of St Quentin. Later the Germans began a heavy barrage on the front lines of the 40-mile front, with intensive gas shelling of the front line trenches. In 5 hours 3.5 million shells were expounded. Isolated battalions fought on into the evening of March 22nd, but Lance Corporal Coles was one of the fallen. He is honoured on the Arras Memorial.

GUNNER CYRIL D’ARCY CROSS (1891-1918)

Cyril D’Arcy Cross was born in 1891 in Pulborough in Sussex. In 1911 his family were living at Bullen Court on Goose Lane, Broadway. His parents William and Alice also had three daughters, Iris, Florence and Cicely.

Cyril enlisted in Bournemouth becoming Gunner 163650 in the Royal Garrison Artillery as part of the No 73 Delhi 7th (Meerut) Division. The 73rd Company fought in Palestine in January 1918, at the Battle of Sharon and in the Lebanon in October 1918. Gunner Cross died just two days before the Armistice was declared. He was buried in the Lahore Cantonment, South Cemetery, Karachi and is honoured on the Karachi Memorial. 

PRIVATE CHARLIE FERNES ELSTON (1898-1917)

The Elston family had moved to Somerset from Nottinghamshire where Charlie’s father Henry had worked as a carpenter and wheelwright. Charlie was born in Cambridge Villas, Chard and in 1911 is living with his parents and sister Mary in Ilchester High Street. At some point before 1914 they move to Broadway, living at a cottage called Catherine Wheel. Charlie enlisted in Yeovil and was posted to the 3rd Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment.

The 3rd Battalion of the Worcesters were heavily engaged at the beginning of August 1917 in the opening phase of the Passchendaele offensive. The Battalion held a position on a ridge of higher ground at Westhoek outside Ypres on the Menin Road. They were to relieve the 8th Division when ordered.

From 1st to 5th August they held firm through heavy rainfall and continued enemy shell fire. ‘All night the front of the ridge was plastered with gas -shells of a new type which caused many casualties. The removal of the wounded was most difficult through the deep slime into which the sodden clay was fast being converted’ When they were finally relieved on the 5th August they had lost 22 men, and 106 were wounded. Charlie was one of the dead. He was buried at Ypres. 

GUNNER ALAN JAMES HARDIE (ALIAS HOWLAND) 1897-1918

Alan and his brother William were raised by Ellen and Harman Howland but took their mother’s maiden name Hardie.

Alan was born in Plymouth in 1897, one of six children, of whom brother William was the eldest.

Alan was a Gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery and died on 21 January 1918 at the Northern General Hospital in Leicester. He is buried in Ilminster Cemetery. His gravestone carries the same inscription that is included on his late brother’s stone, ‘A Loving Son. A Boy So Kind. A Beautiful Memory Left Behind.’

PRIVATE WILLIAM HARMAN HARDIE (ALIAS HOWLAND) 1891-1918

William was born in the village of Mutley in Devon in 1891, the oldest son of Music Teacher Harman Howland and his wife Ellen Hardie. The family lived at The Laurels, High Horton in 1911. Initially joining the Royal,Navy and then the Royal Army Service Corps William Hardie became a Private in the First Battalion of the Hertfordshire Regiment, a line infantry regiment, ‘The Herts Guards’ as they were known . Captured on the front, Private Hardie was interred in Munster Camp and died there on 18th August 1918 at the age of 27.

STOKER GEORGE MATRAVERS (1886-1914)

George Matravers was born on the 7 March 1886. After working as a groom servant in Swindon in Wiltshire, George signed up for the Navy at the age of 18 . He served on HMS Nelson, Gibraltar, Victory and Exmouth before joining HMS Good Hope as stoker prior to the start of the Great War.

When war was declared in August 1914, HMS Good Hope was ordered to reinforce the 4th Cruiser Squadron and became the flagship of Rear Admiral Christopher Cradock’s fleet. Cradock moved the available ships of his squadron later that month to the coast of South America to search for German commerce raiders. He was then ordered further south to the Strait of Magellan to block any attempt of the German East Asia Squadron to penetrate into the South Atlantic. He found the German squadron off the coast of Chile on 1 November 1914. They sank Cradock’s two armoured cruisers in the battle of Cronel. HMS Good Hope was lost with all hands. George Matravers was one of 926 officers and ratings who perished. 

PRIVATE CHARLES PERCY WARRY (1894-1917)

Charles Percy Warry grew up in Broadway at the family farm of The Laurels on Broadway Road, where his father George and mother Eliza lived with his sisters Mabel, a dressmaker, Gertrude a dairy maid, and brother Bill, a farm labourer. 

At the age of 17 in February 1913 Charles decided to sail to Australia with his friend and fellow farm labourer Fred Gulliford.  After the 54 day voyage on the Aberdeen Line’s Marathon steamship from Plymouth to Melbourne Charles found work as a farmer in Seymour, Victoria where at the age of 22 in March 1916 he answered the call and joined the 1000 strong 37th Battalion of the Australian Infantry Regiment. 

The Battalion were set for the Western Front. The Australian troopship Asconius departed Melbourne on 27 May 1916 arriving in Plymouth on 18th July from where Warry and his comrades were transferred to the Larkhill British Army Camp in Wiltshire. Warry was transferred to D Company on 10th August and after three months training the Battalion headed to France via Southampton.

The Battalion arrived in France on 23rd November and at first were sent to the Armentieres sector which was considered a ‘quiet’ area where the newly arrived troops could gain their first experience of trench warfare. They undertook patrols into No Man’s Land and minor raids on the German trenches opposite them. On one of these raids, on 4th January 1917, Charles Warry was killed in action. He is buried in the Bonjean Cite Military Cemetery at Armentieres. 

Warry’s friend Fred Gulliford survived the War serving with the 4th Australian Light Horse Regiment in Gallipoli and later on the Western Front. He returned to Australia in 1919

PRIVATE WILLIAM GEORGE GOLLEDGE (1917-1944)

Born in Mere in Wiltshire in 1917 William Golledge lived with his family at Barrington Hill Farm in Broadway. As a schoolboy he experienced tragedy when his mother Theresa was shot dead by a farm labourer at the family home. In 1939 his father Benjamin was farming alongside his brother Jacob and Jacob’s wife Gertrude.

William initially joined the Somerset Light Infantry (Price Alberts) but was transferred to the Army Air Corps. 

He married Margaret Woods while home on leave in Chard in early 1944. Later that year, as part of C Company, 156 Battalion, Parachute Regiment, Private Golledge took part in Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands where the paras were tasked to secure the main canal and river crossings between enemy-occupied Eindhoven and Arnhem. 

With the ground troops who were meant to be providing cover for the paratroopers delayed on the ground, the men from the Parachute Regiment were heavily exposed to enemy fire and fell in great numbers. Private Golledge was killed on 26th September 1944 just a day before the remaining men of British Airborne were evacuated. He is buried in the Groesbeck Canadian War Cemetery in Gelderland. 

THE MEMORIAL

Emery’s Sculptors of Burnham On Sea was a family firm established in 1878 by Jesse Emery. They were responsible for creating more war memorials than any other firm in the country. By 1921, when the Broadway Memorial was commissioned, the head of the firm was Arthur Ruscombe Emery, aged 40. It was Arthur who undertook the Broadway memorial cross commission. 

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;

Age Shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them