BORN LEEDS 1894. HIS PARENTS WERE DECEASED AND HE WAS AN ONLY CHILD. WORKED AS A BARMAN. MARRIED 26/4/1915. HIS WIFE ANNIE MARIA READ & SON WILLIAM (BORN 29/10/1915) LIVED AT THIS ARMY ADDRESS. ENLISTED, 06/11/1914. SERVED EGYPT. WAS IN HOSPITAL AT MALTA WITH SCABIES. ARRIVED FRANCE, 15/08/1916. KILLED IN ACTION, AT SERRE, ON 13/11/1916, AGED 22.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE WILLIAM BERTRAM SMITH 12/1104. Born in 1894 in Leeds, William’s parents were both deceased by the time he enlisted and he appears to have been the only surviving child. He worked as a Barman before the war, but stopped pulling pints to serve King and Country joining the queue outside Hull City Hall to join the fledgling 12th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, 3rd Hull Pals. He married Annie Read at St Barnabas Church on 26th April 1915 and his new wife moved to 14 Strickland Street, Hessle Road; the couple’s only son, William Jnr, was born on 29th October. Less than two months later, William sailed out of Devonport bound for Alexandria, Egypt. His path through the war was slightly different to that of his comrades in that he fell seriously ill in the desert heat and was hospitalised on Malta until August 1916. He then rejoined the battalion, this time not in the sands of Egypt, but the trenches of the Western Front. William was killed in action on the Somme 13th November 1916 and buried in Euston Road Cemetery; he was 22 years old.
