|
Walter Henry Tainton
Walter Henry Tainton was born on 27 September 1874 in Horsley, the eldest son of Henry Tainton and Charlotte née Guy. He was baptised at the Church of the Holy Cross, Avening, on 31 January the following year. Henry had a variety of occupations, variously a labourer, maltster and baker and was supporting a family of eight young children in 1891, by which time Walter was already a farm labourer. Walter's marriage to Clara Jane Farmiloe was registered during the first quarter of 1895 and by 1901 they were living in Owlpen, in a cottage close to Luggershall farm with their oldest two sons, Ernest Walter Henry and William. In 1911 the family, now completed by Albert, Charles and Percy, were at Newington Bagpath, in a cottage comprising two rooms and a kitchen; Walter was a cowman on a farm while Ernest worked in a cloth mill. Walter and Clara later moved to Park Corner, Frampton.
Walter's enlistment into the New Army (raised under Lord Kitchener's initiative) appears in the weekly report of the Gloucester Journal on 26 September 1914. He completed his training in time to arrive in France and join the regular soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment on 25 March 1915, just after the fighting at St Eloi, where the Germans had exploded a huge underground mine. There was much underground work with counter-mining, but another German mine exploded in April. On 11 May the 2nd Battalion was shelled in their trenches nearly all day, and after being sent to rest in a field were ordered to Sanctuary Wood, and decided to drive the Germans off a hill, a position from which they could fire into the British trenches. This was eventually successful and, although the hill could not be held owing to enemy shellfire, the time was used to re-trench in better positions. These actions resulted in 12 men killed, including Private Walter Henry Tainton, eight missing and 18 wounded : great praise was earned from General Joffre and their Corps Commander. Walter was posthumously awarded the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal, and is commemorated on the CWGC Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial in Belgium, as well as on Frampton's war memorial and village hall plaque. Clara continued to live in Frampton, at Ward's Court, and was buried at St Mary's on 23 January 1960. |