Gunner William “Bill” Haynes, aged 26, was killed at Arras on 2 May 1917, and his brother Private Walter Haynes, aged 21, died during the Passchendaele Offensive on 10 October 1917. Both are commemorated on the Castlemorton War Memorial. They were two of six sons born to Emma and John Haynes of Lanes Farm, Castlemorton; five of the boys served in the First World War after Kitchener’s recruitment drive, while the youngest, Ned, was exempt as a farmworker.

Family letters show the anxiety Emma and John endured with five sons at war, and the double tragedy of losing Bill and Walter in 1917. Their remaining sons—Jack, Harry and Tom—returned home in 1918 and resumed their lives locally, raising families and working as a gardener, decorator, groom and farmer.

Emma and John lived through great loss; Emma never recovered from the deaths of her sons and kept her back door “open for Bill and Walter” all her life. She died in 1949 after spending her later years with her son Tom in Malvern.

The author expresses pride in their great uncles’ service, gratitude for the restoration of the Castlemorton War Memorial, and a continued interest in family history, noting that many families, if they look, will discover ancestors who served in the First World War.

GUNNER WILLIAM ‘BILL’ HAYNES and PRIVATE WALTER HAYNES

MY GREAT UNCLES

Karen Davies

Full story is in Journal 5