PRIVATE ARTHUR HALLEY
ROYAL BERKSHIRE REGIMENT
29TH JUNE 1916 AGE 18
BURIED: CARNOY MILITARY CEMETERY, SOMME, FRANCE
Arthur Halley was one of his widowed mother's three children. In the 1911 census he was a boarder at the Blue Coat School, Colmore Street, Birmingham. The school, which was a charity school, educated 250 children - boys and girls - from poor families. By 1911 his mother was married to a new husband and had six step children living at home.
To have been killed when he was and at the age he was, Arthur Halley must have been a volunteer. Although conscription had been introduced in January 1916, Arthur, at 18, was too young to have been conscripted. He was killed in action on the Somme two days before the launch of the big offensive. His step-brother, Edwin Howard Bates, who was the same age as Arthur, had been killed in action in Gallipoli on 10 August 1915.