Will was born on 20 April 1899 in Preston, Victoria, the youngest brother to Don aged 9, and Allan who died in early childhood.

He receives his schooling at Tyler Street Preston State School, and is taught the violin. Will, an Army Cadet, is a regular church goer with his family. He works as a journeyman coach builder after completing his apprenticeship with Stephens & Son.

In June 1918, Will enlists to serve his country and expand his horizons. After some basic training at Broadmeadows, Will departs Port Melbourne at the end of August on the troopship HMAT Barambah to join the last Australian convoy to reach Europe.

Within days of a stopover in South Africa, Spanish Influenza breaks out aboard. Will is one of 800 who fall ill, and 25 young men are buried at sea and at Sierra Leone. A parliamentary inquiry is later held into the dreadful conditions on the Barambah. The convoy sights the English coast two days after Armistice is declared.

After six weeks intensive training in England, Will writes home “...dominion troops have to be out of England by Xmas, to make room for the four million tommy soldiers coming home.

All men under 19 yrs are being sent straight back to Australia, and the others over to France to join the 5th Division in the army of occupation, so I have a good chance of seeing the inside of Germany. I suppose I will see some strange things and get in some tight corners, but I have got in with some steady cobbers. There are five of us, not one of us have ever touched drink.”

The Australian troops end up not being a part of the army of occupation, so Will's early months of 1919 are spent in France moving between billets, doing odd jobs, coal fatigue, office runner, parades, kit inspections and route marches. “Well Mother there is nothing doing over here now, time drags terribly.”

Football, cricket and hockey matches between battalions burn off excess energy, and there are “pictures” and occasional dances at the chateau for entertainment. Will writes, “I play football with the battalion team now… we are out training every second day...it helps to keep me in good nick, we have played 6 matches and won 4, our next match is with the 56th battalion, the footballers escape all duties.”

After leave in Brussels marvelling at the art and architecture, Will's diary entry for 22 March states “Warned for draft with Graves Detachment”. The following day he is on the move from Beaumont by truck, train and marching, reaching Villers Bretonneux on the April 4. The day he arrives, Will goes for a walk to find the grave of his best friend's cousin, Private (2671) Richard Edwin Nicolls DCM, who died of wounds near the end of the fighting. Little did Will know that three months later he would write in his diary “Tuesday 23 July – Started to shift the small Chalk Pits cemetry [sic]. I took up Richie Nicholls' body.”

Work starts in earnest and Will's terse diary entries for that first week paint a picture of life in the Australian Graves Detachment.

“Monday 14 April – Started work today, digging graves in cemetry [sic], very hard ground”, “Tuesday 15 April – Working in the fields digging up the bodies, a very unpleasant job”, “Wednesday 16 April – Found a grave with 18 men in it, no crosses, only 4 had identification on them”, “Thursday 17 April – Working in cemetry [sic]. An English lady came over to see her son's grave, found him lying in a bag & fainted”, “Friday 18 April – Holiday today.”

Will writes home the next day, “Dear Mother… Well we started work last Monday & I can not [sic] say I am exactly in love with the job, we do three days in the fields digging up the bodies, it is the easiest but I'd rather be in the cemetry [sic] digging the graves, it is terribly hard ground but it's a clean job. This week we have reburied 200 men, all day long we have representatives from the various allied armies around taking photos & particulars of the graves.”

The weeks settle into a routine for Will; hard work in the cemeteries and clearing the battlefields is interspersed with sport, the pictures, concerts and swimming in the Somme.

Leave in Paris is a highlight. Will recounts his adventure in vivid detail to his Mother, “Well I have been to gay Paris & all I can say is it is wonderful. London can not be compared with it & Melbourne is like the smallest of bush towns compared with it, wishing that dear old place no harm… the memory of it will live for ever [sic], it is a place nobody should miss seeing over this side.” His first evening in Paris is spent at the Opera The Damnation of Faust, “The music was like, well it was like nothing I had ever heard before it is unexplainable, kind of sent shivers up your spine, the orchestra consisted of 58 instruments, including 20 violins & cellos.”

Abruptly in mid August the five companies of the Graves Detachment leave for England. Will spends his remaining days on demobilisation leave seeing the sights of London and travelling to Edinburgh and Aberdeen before returning to Australia in November 1919.

On his return, Will works as a builder with his brother Don. In 1924, he marries Ivy Upham who corresponded with Will and several other boys away at the war. Will builds their home in McIvor Street Preston, where they raise three children. During the Depression he rides a bicycle carrying his tools from Preston to Warrandyte and Warburton for work. After serving in Civil Construction Corps during the Second World War, Will works again with his brother as sub-contractor builders. Will's daughter, Norma, remembers him as a fun-loving man, often singing and whistling – Mademoiselle from Armentieres was a favourite.

On the way home from work on 8 October 1953, Will calls at his doctor's surgery as he had been poorly through the day. Unfortunately while there he suffers a coronary occlusion and dies.