Three awards of the Distinguished Conduct Medal (D.C.M.) were made to Accrington Pals for conspicuous courage during the fateful attack on Serre of 1st July 1916. Two of those awards, to Sergeant Harold Kay and Private William Warburton, were made for the same action, a charge on a machine-gun post in the German front line trench.

Above left: William Warburton. Photograph from the Accrington Observer & Times of 5th September 1916. Above right: Croft Street (now demolished) in Accrington. Photograph from the Garth Dawson Collection (GD77319) by kind courtesy of Judith Murphy.

William Warburton was born on 8th November 1884 at 3 Chapel Street in Oswaldtwistle, the son of James Warburton, a cotton weaver, and Alice Warburton (née Nixon or Owen(s)¹). Within seven years, James and his father had moved to 12 Croft Street in Accrington where they were living with his grandmother, Rose Warburton. The small family unit was still together in 1901, at 27 Grange Lane in Accrington, by which time William was employed as a drawer in a coal pit.

William was still working as a collier when he enlisted into the King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regt.) at Accrington on 9th February 1905; he was described as being 5ft 4½in (1.64m) tall, 127lbs (58kg) in weight, with a 35in (89cm) chest, fresh complexion, grey eyes and brown hair. His time with the regiment was short, for just 27 days after being posted to the regiment's Depot company at Lancaster with the number 8522, he was discharged on 3rd March 'as not likely to become an efficient soldier', a phrase which was not necessarily a reflection of his attitude but might simply have been explained by a lack of teeth (a common condition of the time).

On 29th December 1906, William married 16-year-old Caroline Huby at Christ Church, Accrington. Their first daughter, Edith, was born on 9th May 1907; a second daughter, Caroline, followed on 23rd July 1909. By the time of the 1911 Census, William was employed as an iron driller at Howard & Bullough's works in Accrington, and the family of four was living at 18 Victoria Street, Church. At some point in the next three years, William sought better employment in America but, on the outbreak of war, returned home² to enlist in the Accrington Pals on Christmas Eve 1914, and was assigned the number 17922.

In the attack on Serre of 1st July 1916, William was among a party of men led by Sergeant Harold Kay to rush a machine gun - probably the gun commanded by Unteroffizier Kaiser - in the German front line. It was an action for which both Harold and William were awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (D.C.M.). While recovering in Stobhill Military Hospital, Glasgow from a wound sustained on 8th August, William told of the action in an interview that was published in the Yorkshire Weekly Record of 9th September³:

We found ourselves - I won't say where nor when - in a most extraordinary position. A good number of us there were, and we were pretty far ahead - near the barbed-wire outside the German lines, as a matter of fact - waiting there for reinforcements to help us push forward. The guns on both sides were pouring out a fearful barrage, our lot keeping the Germans back and their lot keeping ours back. The noisy horror of it all and the feeling of tense anxiety while waiting for reserves to come along were almost unbearable, but they were as nothing to the annoyance and irritation caused by one solitary machine-gun which kept up its vicious spray right in front of us. That gun was a nightmare instrument. It stood at the rear of the German trench before which we lay. It was beautifully protected on all sides, and the only portion of it which we could see was its ugly little nozzle as it darted out and in, in and out, of the tiny, yet ample embrasure which had been made for it. A devilish weapon and devilishly well handled, as we were learning to our cost.

The beastly thing was becoming unendurable, and so our leading officer called for men to go out and silence it once and for all. Fourteen of us, there or thereabout, responded, and out we set. I need not tell you all that happened on that brief but terrible journey. The gun, I suppose, was only thirty yards or so from us, and yet, despite our rapid race across that little space, no fewer than nine men dropped. Five, myself amongst them, reached the German parapet. Now came the worst part of our job. We had no idea how many Germans there might be behind the embrasure but there was no time to think of numbers or anything else. With a leap and a scramble we cleared the enemy trench, topped the embrasure, and flung ourselves down on that infernal machine and its infernal crew. How many were there? Six! Six of them, and five of us! You can picture to yourself what it was like. It was too exciting for me to note details. I was too busy in fact.

We had a terrific hand-to-hand fight - no shooting, but just a thorough bayonet battle - six Huns versus five British. It was all over before you could count. Every German went down, and my last recollection was of the sergeant and myself standing, or probably staggering about, alone. Our three comrades had bit the dust. My last recollection did I say? Well, not exactly. The German crew was done for, but the gun remained. It must be destroyed. I had a bomb with me, and just before I cleared back again to our own lines, for time was life in that horrible hole, I let fly. The gun sailed skywards in bits. It would trouble us no more. I have said that time was life. And so it was. Despite the ferocity of the bayonet fight, the hot, close, breast-to-breast nature of it, I came out without a single scratch. Where the sergeant had vanished to I could not see, so I cleared off towards our own lines, and just as I was getting in amongst the boys again, a bit of shrapnel took me on the leg. That was my souvenir - that and what has now come to me, the D.C.M., you know. The sergeant? Oh, I saw him next day wandering about 'No Man's Land' on some other job. He had come through all right, too.

It was some time after that I got the knock-out which sent me home here to Blighty. It was a close call, and no mistake. I was in the trenches at the time, busy as usual, about something, but not too busy to prevent me keeping my ears open for the sound of anything that might come along and - well, stop me from hearing anything again. And, sure enough, there rose just the sort of sound I had half expected, the curious 'ch-ch-ch-ch-chug' of a rifle-grenade. It was coming straight for the trench, too. Funny how you can distinguish 'em, but not so funny when you don't know exactly where they're going to land. Whatever prompted me I don't know, but I slipped over a bit from where I was standing. Talk about luck? I had scarcely evacuated the place when the horrible thing landed plumb where I had been standing. Oh, I got it all right, or bits of it, but I did not get the real thing. I had stepped aside just in time, and so here I am able to tell you about it.

The D.C.M. was presented to William by the former mayor of Accrington, Captain John Harwood, in the Council Chamber of Accrington Town Hall on 9th November.⁴ By this time, William was convalescing from the wounds to his legs at Ellerslie Military Hospital on East Park Road in Blackburn. His recovery was hardly helped when, in the afternoon of Tuesday, 6th March 1917, having attended a matinee performance at one of the picture palaces in Blackburn, he slipped and fell, fracturing his left leg.⁵ William was discharged from the Army on account of his wounds on 1st November 1917, and returned to employment at Howard and Bullough's works. He would later work as a postman.

William and his family were living at Park Farm Cottage in Church in 1921, but shortly afterwards made their home at 219 Stanley Street, Accrington; it would remain William's home address for the remainder of his life. Caroline sadly died of tuberculosis at the age of only 39 on 7th September 1928. Five days after his 69th birthday, William died of bilateral pneumonia, an abscess of the left lung and bronchiectasis at Accrington Victoria Hospital on 13th November 1953.

Neither of William's daughters married; they went on to share a home in Lark Hill, Ripon until their deaths, Edith on 10th December 1986 and Caroline on 30th September 1993.

Notes

1. William's birth certicate and baptism record both give Nixon as the maiden name of his mother. The record of his brief army service in 1905 names a brother, Owen, whose birth certificate gives Owen as his mother's maiden name. James Warburton married Alice Owens at Immanuel Church, Oswaldtwistle in 1884; I have found no trace of a James Warburton marriage to Alice Nixon. [back]
2. Accrington Observer and Times, 2nd September 1916, page 5. [back]
3. Yorkshire Weekly Record, 9th September 1916, page 1. [back]
4. Accrington Observer and Times, 11th November 1916, page 6. [back]
5. Blackburn Times, 10th March 1917, page 6. [back]

© Andrew C Jackson 2026
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