Walter Ernest Moreton

William Moreton was born in 1893, the son of Edward and Elizabeth Moreton. The family followed agricultural work across Hampshire before settling in Hambledon, where by 1911 they were living at Beckless Cottages. Like many village families they relied on rural labour, and William grew up in a close farming household whose sons reached adulthood just as the country entered war.

He enlisted in the Royal Garrison Artillery and became Gunner 56017 in the 80th Company. Instead of the trenches of France his service took him overseas to Singapore, one of the principal fortified naval bases of the British Empire. The garrison there manned coastal guns guarding the shipping routes between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, a vital link in imperial communications. Although far from the Western Front, the work was essential to the wider war effort.

The tropical climate proved dangerous to European troops and sickness was widespread in the garrison. On Sunday 18th July 1915, aged twenty-two, William died of heart failure and edema of the lungs, most likely resulting from illness contracted during service in the oppressive heat rather than enemy action. He was buried in Kranji War Cemetery overlooking the Johore Strait.

His death was the first loss suffered by his family during the war. Two years later they would lose another son, Budd, killed in the fighting in Flanders. Together their names stand on the Hambledon memorial as a reminder of a single household’s sacrifice – one brother dying in the distant Far East and the other on the battlefields of Europe.