Remembering Walter James Deal: His Service and Sacrifice

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Private Walter James Deal, 23238, 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, died of wounds on 12 May 1918 in France and Flanders.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission and family report

Early Life and Family

Walter James Deal was born about March 1886 in Denton, Kent, his birth registered in the Dover registration district in the March quarter of 1886.[file:42] He was the son of Henry Deal and Emily Goldfinch, and census records show him growing up in Denton Street, first as a five-year-old in 1891 and later as a fifteen-year-old labourer in a garden in 1901.[file:42] These records place him firmly within a working Kentish family rooted in the villages south-east of Canterbury.[file:42]

By 1911 Walter was living in Petham, Kent, where he worked as a gardener and domestic boarder at The Bakery on Petham Street.[file:42] On 26 December 1912 he married Ethel Emma Smith at All Saints, Petham, and the couple had at least one child, Arthur James Deal.[file:42] His pre-war life therefore combined rural labour, marriage and family responsibilities, giving a fuller picture of the man behind the military record.[file:42]

Military Service

Walter enlisted at Caversham, Berkshire, while living at Sonning Common, Berkshire, between 1916 and 1918.[file:42] He served as a Private with service number 23238 in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.[file:42] The family report also links him to medical records held under the National Archives reference MH106/963, showing that he was treated in late 1916 for trench feet, a common and often debilitating condition caused by prolonged exposure to cold and wet conditions in the trenches.[file:42]

His medical note records his admission on 19 December 1916 and transfer to a sick convoy the following day, with the observation that he passed through No. 14 Ambulance Train and the hospital ship Glenart Castle.[file:42] Those records place him within the wider medical evacuation system that supported British forces on the Western Front, and they show that his service was affected by the harsh realities of trench warfare before his final illness or wound.[file:42] Walter qualified for the Victory Medal, the British War Medal and the Memorial Death Plaque.[file:42]

2nd Battalion Context at Death

The key unit at the time of Walter’s death was the 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, an experienced regular battalion that had begun the war stationed at Aldershot as part of the 5th Brigade, 2nd Division.[file:42][web:46] It mobilised and landed at Boulogne on 14 August 1914, then served continuously on the Western Front through the early battles of the war, including Mons, the Marne, the Aisne and First Ypres.[file:42][web:43][web:46] By 1918 the battalion had become a battle-hardened formation, having already fought in the great offensive and defensive battles of 1918 from St Quentin to the Selle.[file:42][web:43][web:46]

Because Walter’s death was recorded in France and Flanders on 12 May 1918, his battalion’s operational setting matters greatly to understanding his final days.[file:42] The 2nd Battalion’s long service on the Western Front meant it was part of the British Army’s hard-fought response to the German spring offensives, and by the spring of 1918 it was moving through the sequence of battles listed in the family report, including St Quentin, Bapaume, First Arras 1918, Albert, Second Bapaume, Havrincourt, Canal du Nord, Cambrai 1918 and the Selle.[file:42][web:43] The battalion’s later record also notes that it ended the war at Villers Pol, France, confirming its presence in the closing stages of the 1918 campaign.[file:42]

Although the supplied record does not identify the exact action in which Walter was wounded, the combination of his date of death, his French burial, and his battalion’s 1918 operations strongly suggests that he died from wounds received during the intense fighting of that year.[file:42][web:46] The 2nd Battalion’s wartime history shows that it was a front-line regular battalion throughout the conflict, which makes Walter’s service part of the broader story of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry’s sustained infantry campaigning on the Western Front.[file:42][web:43]

Circumstances of Death and Burial

Walter James Deal died on 12 May 1918 in France, with his cause of death recorded as died of wounds.[file:42] He was thirty-two years old, born in Denton, Kent, and living at Sonning Common, Berkshire, when he was taken to France and Flanders with the British Army.[file:42] His father is named in the death notes as Henry Deal of Denton, Canterbury, confirming the family link already established in the earlier civil and census records.[file:42]

He is buried in Doullens Communal Cemetery Extension No. 2, Somme, France, in Plot II, Row B, Grave 9.[file:42] Doullens was a major medical and evacuation centre on the Western Front, and by 1918 its cemetery extensions were being used for casualties from the fierce fighting on the Somme and Arras fronts.[web:48][web:51] That setting reinforces the likely sequence of wound, treatment and death that is reflected in Walter’s military and burial records.[file:42][web:48]

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records his full identity and burial details, while Find a Grave preserves his memorial under ID 56396944.[file:42] These records ensure that his sacrifice remains marked both in France and in digital remembrance spaces used by family historians and local researchers.[file:42] Walter’s grave is therefore both a family memorial and part of the broader landscape of Commonwealth remembrance on the Somme.[web:51]

Legacy and Family Memory

Walter married into local Kent family life before the war, and his wife Ethel Emma Smith and son Arthur James Deal are named in the family report.[file:42] His story therefore belongs not only to military history but also to the history of a young husband and father drawn from rural labour into the first industrial war of the twentieth century.[file:42] The family report identifies him as a second cousin three times removed to the researcher, showing that his memory still links living descendants and wider family networks.[file:42]

His military experience also illustrates the way ordinary soldiers moved through several stages of the Great War: pre-war rural labour, enlistment in the mid-war period, trench illness, front-line service, wound treatment, and burial in a casualty cemetery near the combat zone.[file:42] The 2nd Battalion’s history supplies the necessary military frame for that story, showing that Walter served within one of the British Army’s most continuously engaged regular battalions.[file:42][web:46] In a local history context, his biography can be used to connect Denton, Petham and Sonning Common with the wider story of the Western Front.[file:42]

Sources and Further Reading

• Compiled family report: Individual Report for Walter James Deal.[file:42]
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Walter James Deal.[file:42]
• Pegasus Archive: 2nd Battalion, The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.[web:43]
• National Army Museum: Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.[web:46]
• Doullens Communal Cemetery Extension No. 2.[web:48]
• WW1 Cemeteries: Doullens Communal Cemetery Extension No. 2.[web:51]