Pte 57825 William Parker Redshaw

• Age: 20
• From: Newcastle-on-Tyne
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: St Martin Calvaire Brit Cem
  Panel Ref: I.A.6

William Parker Redshaw was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in the second quarter of 1897 the only son of William Redshaw and his wife Janet (nee Calder).

The family were living at 23 Adolphus Street, Seaham at the time of the 1901 Census. William senior was 38 and working as a blacksmith’s striker, Janet was 37. The 4 year old William had three sisters – Mary Ann who was 16 and working as a beer bottler, Janet aged 6 and 11 month old Margaret.

The 1911 Census records William living with his parents at 1, Pilot Terrace Seaham Harbour, and working as a bottle maker at the Seaham Harbour bottle works, his father is doing the same job too. His three sisters are also living at this address, but Mary Ann is recorded as having been married for 6 years and having 3 children, one of whom, 5 year old Margaret is also living there

He enlisted at Seaham Harbour joining the Army Cyclist Corps as Private 15818. He was subsequently transferred to the 19th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 57825. 

William was killed in action on Easter Monday 09th April 1917, aged just 20.

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they  were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen  - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19^th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20^th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10^th April.

Of the 17^th King’s  - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when  after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded.

His parents placed an In Memoriam notice in the local press following news of his death:

REDSHAW - Killed in action April 9th 1917. 

Pte William Parker Redshaw, King's Liverpool Regt., aged 20 , dearly beloved and only son of William and Janet Redshaw, Pilot Terrace, Seaham Harbour.

We remember the day you said good-bye,
You said it wasn't for long;
Perhaps you're right, as the ages slide,
But we'll meet again on a happier morn.
Long the day will be remembered by his parents, night and day,
Sad the tears they are now shedding for he was their only son;
There is no one knowsbut a mother's love,
For to part with those she so dearly loved. 

- Deeply mourned by his loving father, mother, sisters and brother-in-law , William; and his loving chum, William Taylor. 

William now rests at St. Martin Calvaire  British Cemetery in France at plot I.A.6 where his headstone bears the epitaph:

"REST HIS SOUL IN PEACE".

The village of St. Martin-sur-Cojeul was taken by the 30th Division on 9 April 1917. It was lost in March 1918 but retaken in the following August. St. Martin Calvaire British Cemetery was named from a calvary which was destroyed during the war. It was begun by units of the 30th Division in April 1917 and used until March 1918. Plot II was made in August and September 1918. The cemetery contains 228 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, five of them unidentified. There are also three German graves within the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

He is commemorated on the Glass Trade Bottlemakers Trade Society Memorial at Seaham Harbour.

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