16th Battalion Cheshire Regiment
(attached to 7th Battalion Queen’s Own – Royal West Kent Regiment)
At Great Rissington Church there is a picture frame containing the photographs of the five brothers from the village who were killed during the Great War. The sons of William and Annie Souls – Albert, Walter, Frederick, Alfred and Arthur all died within two years of each other; Alfred and Arthur were identical twins born an hour apart and died five days apart.
The older boys, Frederick, Alfred and Arthur enlisted originally in the 16th Cheshire Regiment, a bantam battalion raised to take recruits otherwise too small for the army.
By April 1918 Arthur was a Lance Corporal and attached to the 7th Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment. Their diary for April 1918 records orders to hold Villers-Bretonneux plateau at all costs and lists casualties as six officers and 228 other ranks killed, wounded and missing. It gives a roll of honour including Military Medal for 21683 L/Corporal Arthur William Souls (since a casualty).
Arthur was killed in action on 25 April 1918 – he was 31 years of age. He is buried in Hangard Communal Cemetery Extension.