Carole Fife has provide the following:
William was born near Alnwick in 1881. He was the son of James Moffat and was baptised 11th September 1881. In the 1901 census he is stationed in Bradford Moor Barracks and his CWGC certificate tells us that he served in the South African War. By 1905 he had left the Army and he married Margaret Brown. In 1911 they were living at East Terrace, Stakeford, where William was a hewer, and they had a son, Thomas, born in 1910. An article in the Blyth News of October 1916 quotes a letter from William's officer, whilst also telling us that he had been a member of the Bedlington Station Corps of the Salvation Army, but doesn't say when or why he was awarded the Military Medal. As an experienced soldier William had been made brigade bombing serjeant in January 1916. He was seeing to the distribution of grenades during a battle on 21st September when a bomb exploded nearby and he died from his wounds.
He is remembered in Bedlington Station on B163.04 and in Bedlington on B15.06
