William Charles Plummer was born on Tuesday, 31st August 1897 in Boxmoor near Hemel Hempstead the youngest of eight children born to Charles Plummer and Margaret Twitchell. His four sisters were Jane, Lily, Daisy and Priscilla whilst his brothers were Frederick, Arthur and George. His father Charles died in 1898 aged forty-one and his mother remarried in 1900 to a local Bricklayer, George Gower.

William started school in 1903 at Boxmoor JMI, moving from the Infants to the Middle school on the 8th February 1904. He completed Standard I successfully in the same year but his progression through the other six standards did not materialise and he left Boxmoor on the 28th July 1910, just before his thirteenth birthday. The cause of leaving in the school register was “No Work”. It is unclear what this means, and it may not have been ‘a cause of leaving’ but rather a statement of the fact that William was leaving with no job to go to, quite unusual at this time.

However, in 1911 the Census records that William has found employment and was working at Apsley Mills for Dickinson & Co. Ltd. as a ‘Carrier’ on a ‘Paper Ruling Machine’ presumably carrying materials to and from the machine as part of the production process.

On the outbreak of war William was seventeen years old but this did not stop him from requesting permission from his employer to enlist in the Colours. Permission granted and even though he was still underage, he attested at Hemel Hempstead in February 1915 and joined the Hertfordshire Regiment.

He was initially posted to the 2/1st Battalion to undergo basic training and until he was sent to France he trained at Newmarket, Suffolk. He left for France on the 17th August 1915, two weeks before his eighteenth birthday, disembarking at Le Havre on the following morning before joining the 1st Battalion at Beuvry near Bethune a few days later.

William was soon in action in The Battle of Loos in September where several Hemel soldiers died or were wounded but he came through this action unscathed. By late May 1916 the 1st Battalion had moved back towards Bethune and was in the trenches at Festubert. The Battalion relieved the 11th Royal Sussex Regiment on the 25th May and three days later, just before it was relieved by the 17th West Yorks (Bantams), William was killed.

William is Remembered with Honour in the Le Touret Military Cemetery, Richebourg-L'avoue, Pas-de-Calais, France, where he is interred in Grave III.G.1. The inscription on his headstone, requested by his mother Margaret, simply reads: “REST IN PEACE”.

He was only 18 years old when he died, old enough to enlist but still too young for overseas service.

William was eligible for the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.