BICKERTON, WILLIAM, 2nd Lieut., Machine Gun Corps, 3rd s. of Thomas Bickerton, of Longhoughton, near Alnwick, co. Northumberland, by his wife, Mary, dau. of J. J. Robinson; b. Longhoughton aforesaid, in 1888; educ. Duke’s School, Alnwick; was a Grocer; joined the Northumberland Fusiliers early in June, 1915; quickly attained the rank of Sergt., and served as Machine Gun Instructor in various training camps in England; obtained a commission as 2nd Lieut. 28 March, 1917, being attached to the Machine Gun Corps; served with the Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders from 3 June, and was killed in action at Hollebeke 20 Sept. following. Buried there in the Fusiliers’ Wood. His Captain wrote: “Your son was killed in the early morning of 20 Sept., shortly after the commencement of the great battle in which we took part. He was killed instantly by a shell, whilst gallantly commanding his guns. Our machine guns did a lot of execution, and the enemy did his best to find us. I cannot tell you how deeply sorry I am personally at the death of your son. William was one of my best officers and highly popular with all of us. Our part of the attack involved a great deal of preparation. He was a keen and gallant fellow. I am sure you must be proud of him. His place here in this company will be difficult to fill,” and Lieut. Eckersley: “He was an excellent and fearless officer, and was highly esteemed by both officers and men.” Unm.<\/p>\n
Source : De Ruvigny’s Roll Of Honour Vol 5<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BICKERTON, WILLIAM, 2nd Lieut., Machine Gun Corps, 3rd s. of Thomas Bickerton, of Longhoughton, near Alnwick, co. Northumberland, by his wife, Mary, dau. of J. J. Robinson; b. Longhoughton aforesaid, in 1888; educ. Duke’s School, Alnwick; was a Grocer; joined the Northumberland Fusiliers early in June, 1915; quickly attained the rank of Sergt., and served […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-machine-gun-corps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6904,"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6903\/revisions\/6904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww1photos.com\/firstworldwarsoldiers\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}