The last trench tour at Hill 60 in June 1916 had a high ratio of men killed to those wounded. The 15th Battalion lost 1 officer and 13 other ranks killed in action and 14 men wounded. The very last day of the tour on June 29th, a patrol had reported increased enemy activity in the German front line trench and the battalion suffered its last fatal casualty when their lines were heavily shelled in the afternoon.
28020 Corporal William Edward Faultless was a 27 year old sheet metal worker originally from Staffordshire when he attested into the 15th Battalion at Valcartier in September 1914. He served in No. 4 Company at St. Julian in April 1915, Festubert in May and throughout that Fall and Winter 1916 in the Ploegsteert and Messines Road trench tours as well as the Spring tours at Hill 60. He was killed and two others were wounded when they were crossing The Cut on the way back from The Dump to the front line at Hill 60. Corporal Faultless is buried at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery.
At this point in the war battalions were still commonly erecting ‘regimental’ crosses/markers made by unit carpenters over the graves of their Fallen and this was the case with Corporal Faultless. The 15th Battalion Memorial Project has photographs from this period of the grave markers for Faultless, Lieutenant Botterell, Lieutenant Colonel Marshall and Sergeant Haley. The battalion had obviously adopted a celtic style cross for its markers which in itself is not unusual as celtic type crosses were traditionally used in England and many CEF battalions used it for their Fallen. However, the 15th Battalion’s celtic cross had a distinctive black mourning ribbon painted on the lower shaft of the cross – something that we have not found on images of other unit’s crosses. It is also interesting to note that the large battalion Vimy cross erected on 10 April near Nine Elms and which now resides in the Regimental Museum is simply a larger scale but exact copy of these earlier celtic crosses (less the mourning ribbon).