William Walter Jones Corporal 9253 - 1st Bn. North Stafford Regiment Killed in action on Tuesday 13th October 1914, age 24 Buried in Outtersteene Communal Cemetery Extension, Bailleul, Nord, France. William Walter Jones was born at Woodseaves, Market Drayton on 17 June 1890 to 36- year-old canal worker Joseph Jones, from Ellesmere, and 31-year-old Emily Mary Rogers, from Gnosall Heath. Joseph and Emily married in 1879 and before William’s birth had been living at Tyrley Wharf near Market Drayton, where their older children were born. Emily apparently didn’t like her name, and is on the censuses as Mary Emily, then Mary E, and finally M.E.! In 1891 the family were at Market Drayton, and Joseph was listed as a canal bank tender. At that point William had four sisters and one brother at home. In 1901 the family were at Norbury. 47-year-old Joseph was still working on the canal, and his oldest son was a paint apprentice. William was 10 and had a 5-year-old sister, Mary Emily, born at Norbury. Joseph and Mary Emily (now with her full name again) were still at Norbury Junction in 1911, Joseph working as a canal labourer. There were two more sons, John Harold, 10 and Charles Allen, 6, both at school, but 15-year-old Emily was now working as a servant for her sister Rose Lavina and Arthur Neville who she had married at Radmore Lane. Some time before the war, William was living at Newport and enlisted in Lichfield into the 1st Bn. North Staffordshire (Prince of Wales’s) Regiment and was promoted to Corporal 9253. He disembarked in France on 10th

  September 1914 with the British Expeditionary Force, and was killed in action just over a month later on 13th October 1914, age 24. There are two medal cards referring to him; one of which says he was awarded the Victory and British medals and the other saying he was entitled to Clasp/2/2951, but surprisingly there is no mention of a 1914 Star. He was buried in Outtersteene Communal Cemetery Extension, Bailleul, Nord, France. II.F.48. His father Joseph Jones had meanwhile moved to Coton and the official record states: “Mr J Jones, Coton, Gnosall, Staffs.” The memorial volume “The Roll of Honour" published in 1916 has:“JONES, W., Corpl.. No. 9253, 1st Battn. The North Staffordshire Regt.; served with the Expeditionary Force in France; killed in action 13 Oct. 1914.” William’s sister, now called Emily Mary like her mother, married Richard Buckle at Gnosall on 5 th  August 1925. She had been living with her father Joseph at Coton. He died in Gnosall in 1931.

Outtersteene Communal Cemetery Extension, Bailleul, Nord, France. Historical Information Outtersteene was captured by the III Corps on 13 October 1914 but no Commonwealth burials took place there for nearly three years. In August 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres, the 2nd, 53rd and 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Stations came to Outtersteene, and the first and last of these remained until March 1918. The hamlet was captured by the Germans on 12 April 1918, and retaken by the 9th, 29th and 31st Divisions, with the ridge beyond it, on 18 and 19 August, but the cemetery was not used again during hostilities. After the Armistice, over 900 graves of 1914 and 1918 were brought into Plots I, II and IV from the battlefields surrounding Outtersteene and from certain small cemeteries. Outtersteene Communal Cemetery Extension now contains 1,393 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. 499 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 14 casualties known or believed to be buried among them.