William Stoneman WW1

Buried Lyon France. 1.A.6. Sunday, February 2, 1919 Age 30. ST. GERMAIN-AU-MONT-D'OR COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION B. 42. Southern France.

William (Billy) Stoneman was born in 1888 in Exeter. He grew up in St Leonard’s and, before the war, had been living in Old Tiverton Road and working as a draper’s traveller.

After playing for other local clubs, his only league outing for Exeter City was against Tavistock in the Plymouth and District League in March 1908. Thereafter, with the club turning professional, he remained on the scene as an amateur reserve player up to the outbreak of war in 1914.

Enlisting in the war effort, Billy served as a private with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry 1/4th Battalion. Having survived the conflict of 1914-1918, he was still in service in Palestine in 1919 at the time when the worldwide influenza pandemic had started to claim millions of victims. Travelling back to Devon, Billy succumbed and died in a British military hospital near Lyon, France on 2 February 1919. He was Exeter City’s thirteenth-known fatality of the Great War.

Billy Stoneman is commemorated at the St Germain-au-Mont-d’Or British Military Cemetery, and on a plaque in the Garden of Remembrance at St James Park.

STONEMAN, Private, WILLIAM GEORGE, 45427, 1st/4th Bn., Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. 2 February 1919. Age 30. Son of Mr. and Mrs. R. Stoneman, of Exeter; husband of Onie Irene Stoneman, of 3, Saltram View, Laira, Plymouth.

For more about Billy Stoneman’s playing career see his entry in the A to Z of Exeter City players section of the Archive