9th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
William John Sallis was born in 1895 in the village of Forthampton, about three miles from Tewkesbury.
He was the only son of farm labourer William Sallis (1864-1934) and his wife Alice June (née Lodge: 1864-1915). Besides William the couple had three daughters and all were surviving by the time of the 1911 Census.
No Army Service Record has survived for Private Sallis and the remaining documents that do survive contain only limited information.
However, an obituary in the Tewkesbury Register & Agricultural Gazette (TRAG) of 22 February 1919 is informative and apparently accurate. Evidently he joined the Army (9th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment) early in the outbreak of the war (about December 1914), having been a farm labourer and served in Salonika and on the Western Front.
His Medal Rolls Index Card states that he first went abroad (to the Western Front) on 20 September 1915 and it is known that the 9th Glosters landed in France on the 21st.
The battalion was assigned to 78 Brigade, 26 Division nd in November 1915 it transferred to the Salonika ront, where it joined an Anglo-French force esisting the Bulgarians.
The battalion remained in Salonika until July 1918, when it returned to the Western Front and became part of 198 Brigade, 66 Division and became the Divisional Pioneers.
In the absence of a service record it is not known if William survived the hostilities unscathed, from wounds or illness and he does not appear to feature in any published casualty list in 1917/18.
According to the obituary he was a ‘smart soldier’, well known and respected in Forthampton and had been a choir boy and a member of the Church of England Men’s Society. The TRAG obituary states that he was home on leave when he contracted pneumonia and died, whereas a report of is funeral in the Gloucester Journal of 1 March 1919 states that he had just been demobilised after four and half years’ service.
Having survived over four years of war, William John Sallis died, as a result of pneumonia (almost certainly triggered by his contracting influenza, which was rife at the time) at 10 Theresa Place, Gloucester on 20 February 1919. He was aged 23.
His funeral was held at Gloucester Old Cemetery, where he now lies and his grave is marked by a standard CWGC headstone. He is commemorated on the Gloucester War Memorial.
On 29 August 1918 William (aged 22 and a serving soldier) had married farmer’s daughter Elizabeth Hemming, aged 26 at the Church of St Luke the Less, Gloucester.
The couple had made their home at 10 Theresa Place, Gloucester. Having been married slightly less than six months, Elizabeth re-married in 1920. Her husband, William Jenkins, was a Leading Stoker in the Royal Navy. She died in 1963.
Researched by Graham Adams 10 January 2020