| Regiment/Service: |
122nd Field Company, Royal Engineers (British Army) |
| Died: |
01/07/1916 (Killed in Action) |
| Age: |
22 |
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William J Lewis was the eldest son of James and Jane Lewis. He was born in Philadelphia, USA about1884. His elder sister Margaret was also born in America. He was one of seven children, six surviving. They moved back to Tyrone about 1896. William was in the employment of Messrs. Hale, Martin & Co. Ltd., Dungannon, prior to the outbreak of war. On reaching the required age, the young William Lewis promptly volunteered. Sapper William Lewis had been attached to the 12th Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles (the Central Antrim Volunteers), in connection with the attack on 1st July. He was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916.
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The Thiepval Memorial will be found on the D73, next to the village of Thiepval, off the main Bapaume to Albert road (D929). Each year a major ceremony is held at the memorial on 1 July. The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme is a war memorial to 72,337 missing British and South African servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme of the First World War between 1915 and 1918, with no known grave. It is near the village of Thiepval, Picardy in France. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Thiepval has been described as "the greatest executed British work of monumental architecture of the twentieth century"
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