William (Bill) Buchner was born on May 4, 1923, the son of Warren Hiram Buchner (born Welland, Ontario) and Mrs. Ruth Edith (nee Booth) Smith, of 108 South Mitton Street, later 142 1/2 North Victoria Street, Sarnia. He had three brothers–Robert, Peter, and Harold (born 1930)–and two sisters, Dorothy and Virginia, all living in Sarnia at the time of William’s death. He would lose his father Warren Hiram in 1932, when William was only nine years old. Growing up in Sarnia, William attended Wellington Street Public School and played softball in the school league. Prior to enlisting, he was working in Niagara Falls, listing his occupation as a labourer and his home address as 225 Cromwell Street, Sarnia. William, single at the time, enlisted in the Canadian Army, the Royal Canadian Regiment, in London, Ontario, adding a year to his age to qualify for enlistment, when he was only 17 years old.
While overseas, he was with the Canadian Army that smashed the Axis defences in the Battle of Sicily and moved on to fight them on the road to Rome, during the Italian Campaign. In an October 1943 letter home to his mother, he had little to say about the engagements he had been through, but did describe the Italian country as “pretty” and that “the weather is sure hot over here”. On Christmas Eve, 1943 Private William Buchner would lose his life in the Italian Campaign, when Allied forces in Italy drove the Axis defences across the Straits of Messina. In early January of 1944, mother Ruth Edith Smith in Sarnia would receive a telegram from the director of records at Ottawa informing her that her son, Private William Hiram Buchner was killed in action on December 24 while fighting in Italy. The telegram said that further information would be forwarded when available. William Buchner was later listed as, Overseas casualty, killed in action, in the field (Italy). Nineteen year-old William Buchner is buried in Moro River Canadian War Cemetery, Italy, Grave VII.D.15.
SOURCES: A, B, C, D, E, F, L, N, 2C, 2D