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FROM THE CONTEMPORARY LOCAL NEWSPAPERS OF NORTH BUCKS (BUCKS STANDARD, NORTH BUCKS TIMES, WOLVERTON EXPRESS)
With today’s internet a wealth of official information is available regarding those who served.
In an age before local radio and television, families often allowed letters to be published in the local press from their loved ones on active service.
However, for their descendants the letters reveal a more personal aspect, graphically describing the experience of the people and providing an insight into their personalities.

B.S. 1914 Nov. 21st

Corporal F. Burgess, of the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment, has been seriously wounded in one of the engagements near Ypres. A bullet passed through his thigh and shrapnel caused wounds on the back of his head and fractured his left arm. He is now in North Staffordshire Infirmary, Hartshill, Stoke on Trent. He is a native of Buckingham, and his brother, Mr. Arthur J. Burgess, is manager of the Newport Pagnell branch of the Aylesbury Brewery Company. Corporal Burgess served for a few years in the Navy, and then joined the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment, in which he served in Gibraltar, Malta, Africa and Bermuda. He was sent to the Front about six weeks ago, and in a letter to his friends at Buckingham makes an earnest appeal regarding ‘shirkers;’
“What is Buckingham doing in the present crisis? Right bang in front I hope - that’s her place. To any Buckingham lads who have enlisted I offer my congratulations, and wish them every success. To those who have not I would remind them of that old command, ‘Go and do thou likewise.’ It has been my privilege to have been to, amongst other places, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and Ostend, and I cannot speak too highly of the Belgian public. They are facing their country’s trial with a fortitude for which no words of praise are sufficient. As for generosity to the British troops, I verily believe they would have given us the clothes off their backs if we would have taken them. From King to peasant they are all the same, and may the time be not far distant when they come into their own again - and a little more besides! In any young man in Buckingham has a mother, sisters, or wife, or even a sweetheart, it is his bounden duty to protect them; he can do that better by going out to fight and keep the Germans there than by stopping until they try and reach England. Let them remember the ‘higher kulture of the Germans include neither honour nor chivalry where women are concerned - so ‘up and at ’em.’”


W.E. 1915 May 7th

In a letter received on Sunday from the Commanding Officer, L. Reynolds, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hutt, of North End Square, Buckingham, learned that their son, Lance Corporal William Hutt, of the 1st Bucks Territorials, died a few minutes after being shot through the chest. Mending the barbed wire entanglements, he had been in front of the parapet of his trench with Lieutenant Green when he was hit, just as they were finishing. On Monday morning a letter was then received from Q.M.S.R. Read, in which he described Lance Corporal Hutt as having the promise to become a smart and capable N.C.O., adding;
“I left in a bottle in his grave, which is in a wood, the passage of Scripture, “He will be our guide even unto death.”

Aged 25, and single, about seven years ago William had left Buckingham for Wales, but on the outbreak of war he rejoined the Bucks Territorials, having previously been a member of the C (Buckingham) Company. His father was well known in the Bucks Battalion of Volunteers, which he joined in 1879, holding during the later years the position of cook. He formed one of the guard of honour at the funerals of the late Lord Beaconsfield and Queen Victoria, and also at the Diamond Jubilee of her late Majesty on Westminster Bridge.

(Captain Reynolds would also become a casualty, when wounded in the head behind the ear, in which he was left stone deaf. Even after being hit he attended to the other wounded until he collapsed. His wound would be treated in hospital at Hampstead.)


ALSO AVAILABLE IN BOOK FORM AS ‘LETTERS FROM THE FIRST WORLD WAR’ FROM WWW. LULU.COM,
PRODUCED WITH THE INVALUABLE EXPERTISE OF ALAN KAY & ZENA DAN.