Lieutenant-Colonel Bill Bingham
Royal Winnipeg Rifles

[H]e was struck in the right upper frontal region by a fragment of shell … septic brain matter was exuding from the wound and X-Rays showed many fragments of bone in neighborhood of wood. On Oct 15th he was trephined and a perforated metal tube introduced. He has made an excellent recovery.

(Personnel file, medial board report, 13 Oct 1915)

Born on 7 September 1890 in Altemont, Manitoba, William John Bingham was a farmer and First World War veteran twice awarded the Military Cross. He enlisted with the 32nd Battalion out of Winnipeg in December 1914. He joined the 10th Battalion in France as a reinforcement officer following the Second Battle of Ypres. Within a month he had been promoted to captain but would be invalided with a serious head wound in October 1915.

Unfit for duty, Bingham was sent back to Manitoba, where he joined the 222nd Battalion as a captain in June 1916. By the end of the year he was back in England and rejoined the 10th Battalion after Vimy Ridge. He earned his first Military Cross directing an attack with “great gallantry and coolness.” He received a M.C. Bar for heroic leadership in the September 1918 offensive: “On one occasion he personal turned around and brough into action an enemy 77mm field gun against the enemy field and machine guns which were holding up the advance.”

His earlier head wound which had left pieces of his skull shattered led to recurring seizures and fainting. He was evacuated sick to England but returned to the field just over a week before the armistice. Twenty-years later, he mobilized as second-in-command of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles. Bingham succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel J.K. Bell just before the battalion embarked to England in late August 1940.

Bingham commanded the RWR overseas until January 1942, when he was replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel T.G. Gibson, a permanent force officer formerly with the Royal Canadian Regiment.

His son Flying Officer Clifford Marvin Bingham was reported missing and presumed killed over the Atlantic Ocean on 20 June 1943. Bingham died in Miami, Manitoba, on 13 March 1953.