Photo: Brian Chandler

Toronto Star 07/06/1917

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

William Carss was one of the nine children born to local fisherman James Carss and his wife Annie (nee Waugh). Born on 15th December 1879 in Newton by the Sea and baptised in Embleton at the end of March the following year, when he was born he already had siblings Mary Ann, John, Margaret Jane, James and Elizabeth, born after him were Joseph, Mabel and Daniel, but Mabel died aged just 4 in 1898.

By 1901 William was a labourer at the local quarry and ten years later, after his father’s retirement, had moved with parents and brothers Joseph and Daniel to live in Victoria Terrace, Bedlington; Joseph and William worked as road labourers and Daniel was a coal miner.

May 1913 saw 43-year-old William arriving in Canada as a labourer where he settled in Toronto, and two years later on 5th June 1915 he went to the army camp at Niagara, Ontario and enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Giving his father then living in Chathill as his next of kin, he became Private 405018 in “B” Company, 35th Battalion. Arriving in England on the SS Metagama in mid-October, six months later he was transferred to the 19th Battalion and was posted overseas, where he joined his new unit on 19th March 1916 near Voormezeele, Belgium.

The first time William was wounded was on 13th September 1916 during the fighting at the Somme, when he received a shrapnel wound to his left upper arm and was treated by a Canadian Field Ambulance station and then spent a few days in a local field hospital before returning to duty.

The second time he was not as lucky when he was wounded during fighting at Vimy Ridge on 9th September 1917. Wounded in his arm and leg, with his right thumb blown off, after seven hours laying on the battlefield he was collected and treated at #22 CCS and then moved to hospital in Boulogne. Within a week he had been invalided to hospital in Endell Street, London where he underwent an operation to remove shell fragments from his thigh, and then on 22nd May his arm was amputated above the elbow.

Seriously ill William Carss died from his wounds at 10.35pm on 31st May “due to a gradual failure of his pulse”

Morpeth Herald 15/06/1917 carries a brief obituary:

Pte. William Carse [sic], Canadians, son of Mr and Mrs James Carss [sic], late of Newton-by-the-Sea, has died from wounds received in action.

William Carss is remembered at Alnwick in A11.56 (Alnwick Gazette Almanack, 1918, page 55), in Embleton on E27.01 and in Craster on C61.02 and C61.04

In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance, and in the National Memorial Album of Canadian Heroes.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Carss