William Albert HEDGES
Image from the Oxford Mail, 10 March 1945.
William Hedges was born in St Ebbe’s on 8 April 1914, the fourth of five brothers. His father was Henry Hedges who had been born and brought up in St Ebbe’s and worked as a labourer, later a carter, for the City Corporation. William's mother was Alice (née Mayo), who was originally from Abingdon (then in Berkshire). Henry and Alice lived together in Bridge Row in St Ebbe’s, and their first son, Henry, was born in October 1903, though they didn’t marry until 1905. By the time their second son Walter was born in February 1906 they had moved to Turner’s Yard, off Church Street in St Ebbe’s (an area which is now buried under the Westgate shopping centre). Two daughters, Ellen and Constance, were born in 1909 and 1910, but both died as infants. Three more sons followed: George, born in 1910; William in 1914; and Stanley in 1916.
In the 1921 census the family was recorded as living at 1 Turner’s Yard, with Henry senior employed as a carter for the City Corporation, based in the depot on nearby Isis Street; Henry junior (then aged seventeen) was working as his assistant; and Walter (aged fifteen) was working as a printer at the Clarendon (now Oxford University) Press in Walton Street. George (aged ten) and William (seven) were at school full time; Stanley was only four.
In 1932, when he was eighteen, William joined the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry. In 1935 the Hedges family moved to 40 Fox Crescent in Cold Harbour, at the far southern end of the Abingdon Road. This was on the Weirs Lane council estate, which was built in the mid-1920s, partly to house council tenants who were being moved out of city-centre areas such as St Ebbe’s. It is likely that the Hedges family moved to Cold Harbour as a result of this on-going clearance programme. Henry senior had by now retired. He died in May 1940, aged 59; his funeral service was at St Matthew’s Church.
William was not recorded at 40 Fox Cresent in the 1939 register, which was taken on 29 September, four weeks after the outbreak of war. This was because he was already in the army, and so had already been called up to fight. He served as a Private with the 2nd (Airborne) Battalion of the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry, service number 5381332. This battalion was stationed in India on the North West Frontier at the start of the Second World War, but was recalled to the UK in 1941 to form part of the new 1st Airlanding Brigade of glider infantry.
The brigade remained in England to start training for the planned invasion of north-west Europe. Hence William was probably able to return to Oxford on occasion, and in the late spring or early summer of 1942, when he was 28, he married Phyllis Sparrow. Phyllis, who was 21, had been born and brought up in Cambridge, the daughter of a night porter at the Bull Hotel. By 1939 she and her family were living at 412 Abingdon Road in Oxford. This was on the Glebe council estate (incorporating Bertie Place), built at around the same time as the Weirs Lane estate opposite, where William’s family lived. Phyllis’s father was recorded in the 1939 register as being a welder at Morris Radiators, and it is probable that, like so many others, the Sparrow family had moved to Oxford because of the work opportunities provided by Morris Motors.
William and Phyllis moved to 39 Duke Street off the Botley Road, but they probably had little time together, as training for members of the 1st Airlanding Brigade ramped up towards D-Day (the Allied invasion of northern France). Gliders in D Company, of which William was part, played a major role in the D-Day campaign, including the raid on 5-6 June 1944 to capture the Bénouville and Ranville bridges over the River Orne and the adjacent canal, around Caen in Normandy. This was the famous Pegasus Bridge operation, which resulted in the villagers of Ranville being the first civilians in France to be liberated.
William was in Glider 4 in No. 22 Platoon of D Company. Due to a navigation error by the aeroplane tugging the glider, it was dropped about 10km north-east of Pegasus Bridge, in the area around the River Dives and its canal, rather than near the River Orne. The majority of the crew made the hazardous journey across the marshes to join the other glider crews. However, according to the memoire of the commanding officer of Glider 4, Captain Priday, three men perished in the Periers-en-Auge area when they became separated from the rest of their crew. It seems that William was one of these three. He died from a bullet in the head at the start of the crossing of the Dives marshes. He was 30.
William was reported as missing but his death was not confirmed to his family until almost a year later: on 10 March 1945 the Oxford Mail published an appeal from his wife Phyllis for information on his whereabouts; confirmation of his death was published by the paper seven weeks later on 5 May.
William was buried in the churchyard of Périers-en-Auge, close to where he died. The inscription on his gravestone reads 'Rest in peace / His loving wife and mother'. His is the only Commonwealth War Grave in this cemetery. The majority of his comrades were buried in nearby Ranville War Cemetery and the adjoining churchyard.
William’s Commonwealth War Grave Commission record gives his second name as ‘Patrick’ but in all other records it is ‘Albert’. His age at death is also wrongly given as 32. It is also possible that he died on 6 June (the date of the landing of the glider), not 7 June, which is the date on his gravestone. According to the Parachute Regiment website William was killed on 7 June trying to relieve Escoville, on the outskirts of Caen, the day after the Pegasus Bridge operation. This is unlikely, given that he was buried in Périers-en-Auge and was in the glider which came down in that area.
William’s commanding officer was Major John Howard, a police officer in the Oxford City Police. Howard survived the war and was portrayed in the 1962 film adaptation of Cornelius Ryan’s book about D-Day, The Longest Day, by actor Richard Todd, himself a veteran of the D-Day operations. There is a special plaque to PC Howard in the police station on St Aldates in Oxford.
William is also remembered on the war memorial of St Luke's in Cold Harbour, South Oxford; the Oxford City Second World War Roll of Honour in the church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket; and in the Second World War Book of Remembrance in the Regimental Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral.
William's widow Phyllis married William Ruck in the summer of 1948 in Oxford. He was originally from Gloucester, but in 1939 he was living in Marlborough Road, Grandpont, and working as a nickel-plater, almost certainly at Morris Radiators, where Phyllis’s father Cecil Sparrow was also employed. William Ruck died in 1973; Phyllis died in 2005, aged 85.
Two of William’s brothers fought with the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry in the Burma Campaign: George and Stanley. Both survived and returned to live in Oxford; George died in 1974 and Stanley in 1984.
Research by Frances Stobbs.
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