Keep the Home Fires Burning - detailing wartime life in the towns and villages mentioned.

B.S. 1917 Apr. 21st

Unofficial news is received that Private Walter Huckle, of Clifton Reynes, has been killed in the recent heavy fighting on the Western Front. A letter from a comrade also serving in the Oxon and Bucks Light Infantry states that he “was at work with us up to dinner-time and was sent on with some others to look after some billets for us. A wall was either blown down or fell on him and buried him, and the poor chap was dead when they got him out. It was a shock to us when we heard of the sad occurrence.”

Born in Olney, before joining up, Private Huckle was the licensee of the public house in the village, the business of which is now being carried on by his wife, Alice. No official news of his death has yet been received.

(Aged 35, Private Huckle died in France on Saturday, March 31st, 1917, and is buried in Tertry Communal Cemetery, Somme, France.)

B.S. 1917 Aug. 18th

Corporal Lawrence Page, of the Grenadier Guards, is officially reported to have been killed in action in France on July 21st, when struck on the head by a piece of enemy shrapnel. 26 years of age, he was the youngest son of Mr. Sidney Page, of Clifton Reynes, and, from employment as engineer with the Mitcham Gas Company, joined up at the outbreak of war.

B.S. 1918 July 27th

In March 1916 William Herbert, the son of the late Mr. Joseph Herbert and Mrs. Herbert, enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and after five months’ training in Dorset went to France, where he was wounded during November of that year. After treatment in England he returned to the front in 1917, being transferred to a Labour Battalion. However, the combination of a gas attack, and developing a severe chill, caused the onset of tuberculosis, and he subsequently underwent treatment firstly at Chester Hospital, and then Stockport. In early 1918 his health was such that he received his military discharge at Manchester, but with his condition worsening he died peacefully on July 15th at the Lodge Farm, Clifton Reynes. His funeral took place on Friday, July 19th at the Parish Church, and with the utmost respect being shown, almost the entire population of the village attended the ceremony, with the coffin, draped with a Union Jack, borne to the grave by four soldiers billeted in the village.