BORN HULL 1894. SON OF HERBERT GEORGE & MARTHA MAUD GARDNER, OF 52 PLANE STREET AND 84 VICTORIA AVENUE, HULL. A FORMER SEAMAN. HE ENLISTED IN THE HULL PALS, ON 8/09/1914. REQUESTED TO REJOIN THE MERCHANT SERVICE, ON 27/8/1916. HE WAS KILLED, AT OPPY WOOD, ON 03/05/1917, AGED 23.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. CORPORAL WILLIAM RICHARD GARDNER 11/344. Born in 1894, the eldest of three children and only son of Richard and Alice Gardner. William’s father was the Master of a Keel on the Humber and the family appear to have lived aboard ship where William worked as the Mate. On 15th November 1913 he qualified as ‘Second Mate of a Foreign-going Steamship in the Merchant Service’. Whether he took to sea or not I don’t know because the next time his life is recorded it is the first week of September 1914 and William has reached the front of the queue outside Hull City Hall to sign up for the new Pals Battalions bound for the great European adventure. A veteran of Egypt and the Somme, he was killed in action on 3rd May 1917 in front of Oppy Wood and like so many that day, his body was simply blasted into dust. William Richard Gardner is commemorated on the Arras Memorial; he was 23 years old.
The attack on Oppy Wood, part of the Battle of Arras, was a significant battle for the East Yorkshire Regiment and particularly for the city of Hull. All four Hull Pals battalions were involved on 3 May and all suffered heavy casualties, with 40% of those present killed or injured. 2nd Lieutenant Jack Harrison, a local teacher and rugby player with Hull FC, won a posthumous Victoria Cross for his bravery in rushing a machine gun position to protect his platoon. His body was never found.The village of Oppy in France had been in German hands since October 1914 and was part of a formidable defensive system including trenches, dug-outs and thick barbed wire defences. During the Battle of Arras, which began in April 1917, the British tried to take Oppy. The first attack was a failure. A second attack was partially successful. The third attack on 3 May, known officially as the Third Battle of the Scarpe, was again unsuccessful with significant loss of life. The troops were ordered to attack at 3.45am, rather than at dawn, and the defending Germans could easily see the line of British soldiers clearly lit by the full moon. The British continued to attack Oppy and were finally successful the following year. The City of Hull Memorial at Oppy was unveiled in 1927 and commemorates the men of the Hull Pals who were killed on 3 and 4 May 1917.
