Leonard Williams

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Grave/Memorial:  		Williams, Leonard

28 January 1897, Mells, Somerset

Jesse and Annie (née New)

3rd Battalion, Goldstream Guards

17296

Private

22 September 1916, age 19

Guards' Cemetery, Lesboeufs, France: XII. L. 8 		      

Biography:
Leonard Williams was born on 28 January 1897, in Mells, Somerset. He was the son and youngest child of Jesse, a domestic coachman, and Annie (née
New). He had two brothers. His father died, in January 1898, when Leonard was almost one.

By 1901, Annie and her sons had moved to Woking, and were living in Board School Road. In 1903, Annie married Samuel Robert Tutt, a tailor, and had
another son with him – they were then living in Knaphill.

Leonard Williams was killed on 22 September 1916. He is buried, in grave XII. L. 8, within The Guards' Cemetery, Lesboeufs, France.

His two brothers, Arthur and Ernest Williams are also both commemorated on the St John’s memorial.



Lesboeufs was attacked by the Guards Division on 15 September 1916 and captured by them on the 25th. It was lost on 24 March 1918 during the great German offensive, after a
stubborn resistance by part of the 63rd Bn. Machine Gun Corps, and recaptured on 29 August by the 10th Bn South Wales Borderers.

At the time of the Armistice, the cemetery consisted of only 40 graves (now Plot I), mainly those of officers and men of the 2nd Grenadier Guards who died on 25 September 1916, but it
was very greatly increased when graves were brought in from the battlefields and small cemeteries round Lesboeufs.

There are now 3,137 casualties of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery, designed by Sir Herbert Baker. 1,644 of the burials are unidentified but there are
special memorials to 83 soldiers known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names of five casualties buried in Ginchy A.D.S. Cemetery, whose
graves were destroyed by shell fire, and three officers of the 2nd Bn. Coldstream Guards, killed in action on 26 September 1916 and known to have been buried together by the roadside
near Lesboefs, whose grave could not later be located.

Two burial grounds concentrated into this cemetery were the following:- Flers Dressing Station Cemetery, Ginchy, between Delville Wood and Flers, containing the graves of 33 soldiers
from Australia and eight from the United Kingdom who fell in September 1916-March 1917.

Guards' Burial Ground, Ginchy, on the East side of the village, containing the graves of 21 officers and men of the Guards Division who fell on the 15th September 1916.