William Parkes was born on 18 January 1896 in Newport, South Wales. His family lived in the Pill (Pillgwenlly) dockland area, where he was baptised at Holy Trinity Church on 16 February. He was the fifth of 11 children of an iron moulder called James Parkes and his wife Maria (nee Mills). After leaving Bolt Street School, he was listed as a hairdresser’s apprentice in 1911.
World War I: the Parkes brothers enlist
William and his three brothers enlisted after the war started in July 1914. James signed up for the infantry in the South Wales Borderers a month after the war began. Thomas became a sapper in the Royal Engineers and, in 1923, emigrated with his wife Mary to California, where he died in 1982. Reginald joined the Royal Navy in 1917 and stayed until 1945. William recalled later that his youngest brother served in both World Wars and that his ship was torpedoed in the Second World War.
William tried to join the Royal Navy at the outbreak of war but was turned down because he was too small at 5’ 5” (1.65 m) and 140 pounds (64 kg). In a later interview he confirmed that he served in the merchant navy, and his medal card for war service is held at the National Archives.
When this service ended, William joined the 12th (Service) Battalion (3rd Gwent) of the South Wales Borderers, which was formed in Newport in March 1915 and later became part of the Welsh Bantam Brigade. He was joined here by another notable Welshman who served in the 12th Battalion during World War I: poet and language activist Saunders Lewis.
The Bantam battalions
The term ‘bantam’ was derived from the name of the seaport city of Bantam in Java, Indonesia. European sailors who restocked on live fowl for sea journeys favoured the small native breeds of chicken in southeast Asia, and any such small poultry became known as bantams. By the early 19th century, the term became used for a small person, and in the later 19th century, it was also applied to a weight class in boxing for smaller men, perhaps deriving from the birds, which are small but aggressive and bred for fighting.
The first Bantam battalions were formed in 1914 to accommodate small men with a maximum height of 5’ 3” (1.60m). Previously excluded from fighting units, these men were allowed to enlist provided they were grouped into special ‘short stature’ units. In some cases, recruits were underage because it was easier to lie about how old they were in a battalion for short men. By the war’s end, 29 Bantam battalions had been created across one Canadian and two British divisions, totaling over 50,000 soldiers.
Officers were typically of ‘normal’ size, and perhaps the most famous of those was Bernard Montgomery, Brigade Major of the 104th (Bantam) Brigade and later Field Marshal Montgomery. Among the famous Bantam soldiers was Sir Billy Butlin, who later founded Butlin’s holiday camps. He was a bugler and stretcher bearer in the 216th (Bantams) Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
William’s 12th Battalion distinguishes itself in action
The Welsh Bantam Brigade trained at Prees Heath in Shropshire in July 1915. In September, it moved to Aldershot, where William trained as a machine gunner. Subsequently, the formation was renamed the 119th Brigade, 40th Division. In December 1915, it moved to Blackdown Camp in Surrey. William also undertook the physical training instructors’ course in the officer cadet battalion from 28 January to 9 February 1916.
The battalion landed at Le Havre as part of the 119th Brigade in the 40th Division on 2 June 1916 for service on the Western Front. Its first serious action was in April 1917, when the 40th and 8th Divisions attacked Gonnelieu, southeast of Cambrai.
The 12th Battalion overcame the formidable defences of Fifteen Ravine with great gallantry and skill, securing all its objectives for 26 killed and missing and 45 wounded. The count was 40 dead Germans in the position and many more beyond it.
This was William’s toughest action, and by the end, he was commanding his company as sergeant, after all the officers were killed. The 12th Battalion performed another successful raid in May 1917, winning a Military Cross and eight military medals. It remained in the same sector throughout the summer, distinguishing themselves by capturing German patrols and by several raids.
A wartime record to be proud of
When shrapnel wounded his leg in 1917, William urged his dresser to bind him up tightly so he could return to his men, but his leg collapsed when he tried to stand. He later became an instructor at Sniggery Camp outside Liverpool and started training for a commission. However, he withdrew when he concluded that he was not educated enough and returned to the front.
Although 2” (0.05m) taller than the prescribed height when he joined, William and two other men regularly went out together on night reconnaissance patrols in no man’s land because their shorter stature made them harder to see. His most disturbing wartime experience was a lone patrol on which he brushed the snow from the face of a dead German in a crater and found that it strongly resembled that of one of his brothers.
He was discharged from service in London in February 1919 and worked on the docks, presumably in Newport.
To the USA: coalminer, plasterer, soccer star
William emigrated to America on the Adriatic, leaving Southampton on 6 October 1920 and arriving in New York on 15 October. He stayed with relatives in Pennsylvania, where he was employed in the coal mines, and his ‘naturalization declaration’ was submitted at Chester, Pennsylvania, on 20 April 1921.
He visited the San Francisco Bay area a year later and decided never to leave. He first worked as a plasterer, nicknamed ‘The Speedy Welshman’ by the San Francisco Chronicle when he began playing soccer in his spare time with the San Francisco Barbarians, who won the state championship in 1922–23. After he was involved in a scuffle, the paper changed this to ‘The Battling Welshman’.
A home and a wife in Napa Valley
He settled in Napa Valley in 1932, becoming an orderly and occupational therapist at the Napa State Hospital and superintendent in charge of outpatients’ day jobs. While there, he met his future wife, Dolly Nelsen, who was then married to Roy Gardner, a famous mail train robber and jailbreaker imprisoned in Alcatraz at the same time as Al Capone.
Dolly obtained an annulment of the marriage because when they married in 1916, Gardner had withheld information that he had been convicted and served time in San Quentin. William and Dolly subsequently married in Napa County in 1936. After the marriage, William helped to build a house opposite the hospital, where he lived for the rest of his life. He tried to join up with the American forces on the day of the Pearl Harbour attack in 1941, but had to withdraw after suffering a minor heart attack.
A long and active retirement
William retired from the hospital in 1961 and cultivated his one-acre garden of vegetables and fruit trees, where the state hospital patients did much of the work for him. After Dolly died in 1979, he lived alone in their house. He sang in a church choir and was active with the California State Employees Association.
In his later years, he enjoyed visiting schools to share his century of memories with children. He attributed his longevity partly to having never smoked and drinking for only two years as a young man. William, who retained his Welsh accent while identifying as English, never returned to Britain. Although ‘Papa Will’ had no children, he sponsored many relatives who emigrated from England and Wales and was close to his nieces and nephews and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
William’s wartime bravery honoured by France
In 2000, William joined other World War I veterans in receiving the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, which the French government had authorised two years earlier to honour the Allies and mark the 80th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice, which ended the Great War on 11 November 1918. Gerard Coste, the French Consul General in San Francisco, pinned the green and white medal on William as he sat in his wheelchair in Napa on 14 December 2000, flanked by a Marine Corps honour guard. Other dignitaries included a State Senator, a British Consul General of San Francisco representative, the interim secretary for the California Department of Veterans Affairs and the Napa mayor.
William Parkes died on 7 October 2002 in Napa, where he had lived for 70 years. He was 106 years old and was buried there with Dolly on 12 October.
Author’s note: A fuller version of this biography can be found on the Newport Past website.
