WILLIAM BUCKNER

The Buckner family of Searell's Road received a further blow on learning that their elder son William had died of sickness in England on 23 October 1918. Before the war, William had been working as a teamster at Waddington west of Darfield in central Canterbury. He had enlisted in September 1916, suffered from measles while on the voyage to England and finally arrived in France in July 1917. After surviving the battles at Passchendaele, he was wounded in his left leg in January 1918, underwent a period of convalescence in France, then leave in England . He returned to duty in September 1918, but was obviously unwell, classified as C Class (unfit for active duty) and returned to England having been diagnosed as suffering from pneumonia. In the Red Cross hospital in Torquay, his condition worsened and he died of pneumonia on 23 October 1918. He is buried in the Uxbridge Cemetery in England. Like his brother Percy, he is also commemorated on the Rolleston War Memorial as well as the Harewood School Memorial (see below).

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