Walter was born on 2 September 1916 in Pancras, London to Abraham, who worked as a tailor, and Annie nee Wain and he had a younger sister Dora. Little is known to date about Walter’s early life. In early 1940, he married Amy Lowe, who was born in Bangalore, India in Bombay, India. Amy was working at the Bombay Scottish Orphanage in Bombay, India. After Walter’s death she remarried in India and moved to Canada.

On the 1 December 1940, in gale force winds, the S.S. British Officer was nearing the entrance to the River Tyne at the end of her voyage from Sheerness, when she set off a mine. This caused flooding in her after section and killed fifteen of her forty-seven crew