The Western Kennet Valley in the Great War, by Roger Day

[Moonraker]

As well having some of England’s finest countryside, the Western Kennet Valley has much to offer the Great War historian, and GWF member Roger Day has seized the opportunity with both hands. Many people will know it best for the Bath Road (A4) that runs through Marlborough and Hungerford and past the site of RFC Yatesbury, and it was this route that a century ago carried many Army Service Corps columns to Avonmouth (some coming from the ASC depot at Grove Park in South East London). The wide High Streets of both towns provided space for vehicles to stop overnight and adjacent commons hosted camping-sites. The hundreds of men often swamped the two small towns but they were warmly welcomed, not least for the trade they bought. Marlborough itself was the original recruiting centre for the 7th Wiltshire Regiment, a memorial to whose men is in the town.

Away from the Bath Road lies the village of Ramsbury, which provided billets for troops early in the war. At nearby Burney Farm from March 1918, there was a working-camp for German PoWs working on farmland. The author has located more information than is usual for such camps and has traced several photographs of British staff and German prisoners.

Chiseldon Camp to the north has had its history published in booklet form, but Roger has sourced fresh material and photographs, as he has for Yatesbury Aerodromes. (There were actually two on the site). With 33 (large!) pages, he does full justice to their Great War history. There are excellent sections on the Volunteer Training Corps and Volunteer Force and on local Red Cross hospitals.

Roger has been fortunate – or perhaps it is due to his hard work – to unearth several rich local sources of photographs and material, including letters from local men based at Shirehampton Remount Depot, near Bristol and Bourley Camp, Aldershot. He has put all this into a larger framework, of the war in general, which should help readers initially interested in the locality to learn more of the war outside the Kennet Valley.

The book is well illustrated, with the publisher having enlarged contemporary illustrations to reveal fascinating detail, such as the coloured circle on the back of a uniform signifying that its wearer is a PoW. There are some posed studio photographs of local men, including an unusual one of a Worcestershire Regiment soldier wearing his gas mask.

At the end are lists of ASC companies and their vehicles noted in Hungerford and Marlborough, of aircraft at Yatesbury and of crashes, injuries and deaths among pilots based there, together with a muster roll of the 1st Volunteer Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment.

The Western Kennet Valley in the Great War, Halsgrove 2014, 160pp, £24.99

[Lancashire Fusilier]

Sounds like a very interesting read.

Regards,

LF