Private William Thomas Naish

01573 Private William Thomas Naish served with 1/4 Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. He enlisted at Oxford in April 1915 and went to France early in 1916. The Battalion fought with 143 Brigade, 48th (South Midland) Division, on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Somme offensive, and the day when over 57,000 casualties were sustained - the largest number suffered in one day by the British Army. William lost his life on 14 August when 48th Division was engaged in the battle of Pozieres. His body was not found, but he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial (Pier and Face 10A and 10D).

William Thomas Naish was baptised in Wheatley on 4 October 1896, son of Arthur Thomas Naish, painter and glazier, decorator and builder, also born in Wheatley, in 1871, and Catherine Horwood born 1872 in Tingewick, Buckinghamshire. In 1901 and 1911 the family were living in a cottage next to the school on Church Road. William was at school in Wheatley in 1903 and attended the Night School 1910, 1911 and 1912. He had been a sales boy in a general grocery store. See also references to him in the Wheatley in a World at War chapter.

The 1910 survey does not distinguish between the houses 29-35 Church Road, so he may have lived at any of these addresses.