Sergeant William Henry Elliott was the son of Thomas and Harriett Elliot. He was born in about 1894, in Nottingham. He enlisted into the 2nd Battalion, The Sherwood Foresters in Nottingham (it is unknown exactly when). He had regimental number 11888. 

He served with the 2nd Battalion during the Great War (1914-18). William would have enlisted prior to the war, as he went with the Battalion over to France in September 1914. They landed at St Nazaire on the 11th of September and were the first of the Sherwood Forester Battalions to embark for France. 

The 2nd Battalion, along with William, saw their first action at Chemin Des Dames on the 20th of September. The next action was exactly a month later, on the 20th of October at Ennetieres. William was wounded on this day and returned home. 

William returned to France and joined the 1st Battalion, on the 16th of March 1915, whilst they were at Pont Du Hem. He served with ‘B’ company.  

Sadly, William would be Killed in Action just a few months later, on the 9th of May 1915, near Sailly. He is commemorated on the Ploegsteert Memorial, along with around 11,000 other servicemen of the United Kingdom and South African forces who have no known grave. Most of those commemorated on the memorial were killed during the day-to-day trench warfare, not in major offensives; this is true of William as the battalion War Diary has no record of the day he was killed.