Walter Ernest Farrow was born at Nash Mills Hertfordshire in late 1897 and baptised two years later at St Mary’s Church, Apsley End on Sunday, 3rd December 1899. He was the first child born to Arthur William Farrow and Leanora Finch and had one sibling, a younger sister Doris Leanora who was six years his junior.

Walter’s father Arthur was a Mechanical Engineer who had come to Apsley to work for John Dickinson & Co Limited at Apsley Mills shortly after he and Leanora had married in West Ham, London in 1897. When Walter was born the family lived in Weymouth Street in Apsley End where Walter started his education in 1902 at Apsley Boys School.

He moved to Berkhamsted School where he completed his education, leaving in 1913 at the age of sixteen when he joined the Civil Service. By this time his father had moved the family to a large house known as ‘Hillcrest’ in Durrant’s Hill, Apsley but still close to the Mills where he worked.

On the outbreak of war Walter enlisted with the Colours, attesting at Hemel Hempstead in February 1915 and joining the 1st Battalion Hertfordshire Regiment. When he signed up for service he was still about seven or eight months short of his eighteenth birthday, so too young to enlist. However, Walter was one of an estimated 250,000 volunteers who enlisted to fight in the Great War. Recruiting Officers often turned a blind eye when apparently underage men volunteered, indeed a man did not require any proof of age or identity to enlist. The youngest recruit is claimed to be Sidney Lewis who enlisted with the East Surrey Regiment in August 1915, five months after his twelfth birthday, and was fighting on the Somme by the age of thirteen.

Following enlistment, Walter went to Bury St Edmunds to train before being sent to France in the summer of 1915. He was posted to the 1st Battalion Hertfordshire Regiment, sometimes referred to as the "Hertfordshire Guards" because it served in the 4th (Guards) Brigade of the veteran 2nd Division. Indeed, the Hertfordshire Regiment adopted many of the Guards peculiarities as a result, including naming its Companies by number rather than letter (1/1st Battalion).

Walter disembarked in France on the 17th August 1915 and joined his Battalion at Beuvry to the east of Béthune a few days later. Just one month after his arrival, he fought at the Battle of Loos where Captain Lovel Francis Smeathman M.C. from Hemel Hempstead was wounded and where the Battalion suffered a number of casualties from gas poisoning.

The next significant action for the 1st Herts came in July 1916 when it fought at the Battle of the Somme. On the 14th July the Battalion were relieved by the 12th Middlesex Regiment and took over from the 16th Rifle Brigade near Festubert. 

Two days later the war diary entry records the following: "19-7-16. A party of about 3 Officers and 60 OR's raided the enemy's trenches at 10.40pm. The part of the trench that was raided had been evacuated by the Germans. The party was in the trenches for 10 minutes as arranged but was bombed from the support line. No prisoners were taken. Our casualties on the evening of the raid were 3 Officers wounded, 3 OR's killed, 1 OR missing, 12 OR's wounded."

Walter was in the raiding party and he was one of the ‘ORs’ killed on Wednesday, 19th July 1916.

He is commemorated in St Mary’s Church, Apsley End.

Walter is Remembered with Honour in Le Touret Military Cemetery, Richebourg-L'avoue, Pas-de-Calais, France where he is interred in Grave III.J.13. The inscription on his headstone, requested by his parents Arthur and Leanora, reads: “FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH”.

He was only 18 years old when he died

Walter was entitled to the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.