Walter was born on 22nd February 1919 to Thomas, a farm worker with horses, and Ethel Edith Harrington who were living at Gay Bower Cottage, Danbury at that time. Thomas had married Ethel Elizabeth Curds at St Mary’s Woodham Ferrers on 23rd July 1911.
His father died when Walter was just seven years old of acute pulmonary tuberculosis which he had been suffering from for three months, he was just 48 years old.
Soon after Thomas’s death Ethel moved to 11 Council House, Crows Lane where she was still living when, in August 1936 it was reported that her eldest son Basil had been killed, aged eighteen by a lightening strike whilst he sheltered under a tree. Walter had to appear at the inquest to give evidence of identification. The report states that Ethel had three grown up daughters and two sons younger than Basil. When the 1939 registration was carried out Ethel was resident at Crows Lane along with her other son Norman Harrington aged eighteen employed as a cowman. Walter was not listed at that address and it is believed that he had already joined the army.
He served as a gunner in 80th Anti-tank Regiment of the Royal Artillery which sailed for the far east in August 1941 on RMS Scythia later transferring to the troopship Johan De Witt arriving in Singapore in early 1941 and then proceeding to Sungei Patani in Kedah Province North West Malaya joining the 11th Indian Division. The Japanese invasion landed on the north west coast on 8th December 1941 simultaniously with the attack on Pearl Harbour.
The division fought several engagements with the Japanese but the campaign was destined to fail and the division fell back to Singapore arriving at the end of January 1942 only for the garrison to surrender to the enemy on 15th February. Walter, along with his mates from the regiment, became a prisoner of war and was marched off to captivity at Changi a prison designed for 600 prisoners.
In October 1942 he, along with most of the regiment, embarked on the hell ship England Maru to sail to Formosa now Taiwan under appalling conditions. The men were then marched to the camp at Kinkaseki where the men were forced to work under atrocious hot and dangerous conditions in the copper mine. The men were vastly overworked, underfed and frequently beaten by their Japanese and Taiwanese guards. Death from injuries, starvation and disease were ever present and one survivor recounts that of the 523 men who joined the camp in October 1942 only 64 survived until liberation by the Americans in 1945. That survivor by then weighed just 4st 10lbs about 30 kilos.
Walter was not one of the survivors. He fell ill on 15th October and subsequently died at noon on 27th October 1943 of beriberi and enteritis both due to poor diet. Beriberi is caused by a lack of vitamin B1 or thiamin and was rampant in most Japanese POW camps.
After the war the bodies of allied soldiers buried in Taiwan were re-interred in the Sai Wan War Cemetery, Chai Wan, Hong Kong.
Ethel took out letters of administration on Walter’s estate in 1945. She died in 1953 and is buried in St Mary’s churchyard. At the time her address was given as 11 Crws Lane, Woodham Ferrers.