Walter Humphrey was born in Crouch on 27 January 1886, one of ten children of a farm bailiff from Wateringbury named William and his wife, Emily Driver. He was baptised in St. Mary’s Platt Church on 14 March, and in 1891, when Walter was five, his family lived on the Ightham Road at Fen Pond Cottage, and it seems likely Walter attended the local school in Ightham. Ten years later, the Humphreys moved to Basted and were residents of Platt at the time of the 1911 census, when Walter left school and was working with his older brother Harry on the railway as platelayers.

When the war started on 4 August 1914, the family lived in Platt at Forest Villas, and like many other young men in the village, Walter was enthused with patriotic duty and rushed to enlist the same month in Sevenoaks. He joined the Royal Engineers and was attached to the 112th Railway Company – a unit that specifically recruited platelayers. Sapper Humphreys was sent to Longmoor for training and embarked in Southampton for Le Havre on board the SS Duchess of Argyle on 15 February 1915.

By the start of May, the company worked on the railway line between Abele and Poperinge; however, unfortunately, the unit War Diary between the end of July 1915, (when Walter would have found himself based at Peselhoek), and the period leading up to his death on 21 January 1916, has not survived. Consequently, the exact circumstances of his death are unknown. Official records have him dying of injuries in a railway accident, and his body buried in the Beauval Communal Cemetery near Amiens.