9th Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers (British Army)
Date Of Birth:
01/09/1892
Died:
01/07/1916 (Killed in Action)
Age:
23
Summary
William James Stratton was the son of William John and Jane Stratton. He was born on 1st September 1892 in Derrycurry, County Armagh. He was one of ten children. The 1911 census records William as 18 years old. Like his father he was a labourer at Derrylee, Killyman. He was living in Glasslough, County Monaghan when he enlisted. Private William James Stratton was serving with the 9th Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers when he was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916.
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"
