Less than a year after the 4th Division of the British Army had visited Wolverton on its annual manoeuvres Britain declared war on Germany, on Tuesday, August 4th, 1914. The war games which had been practised in the Buckinghamshire countryside were now to be played for real in the trenches of Belgium and Northern France. The first week in August was the Wolverton Railway Works annual holiday, and many families had left on special trains for the seaside. The local Territorials too had set off on Sunday, 2nd, to their annual camp at Great Marlow.

Wyn Nichols remembers the panic of one local member of the Territorial Army who overslept

At the declaration of war, many young men from Wolverton and Bradwell rushed to join up. But why? Looking at the events so many years later their enthusiasm seems difficult to understand. Hawtin Mundy sums up the feelings of himself and other young men at that time.



With that sort of impetus it didn’t take long for Hawtin Mundy to decide to join up. On Sunday 9th August he had a walk and a drink with his life-long friend and neighbour in New Bradwell, Sid Carroll. They decided to join the RE’s -the Royal Engineers. Hawtin as a carpenter and Sid as a butcher and the next day went to the Recruiting Office at Aylesbury.

Those Bucks Territorials included the Wolverton detachment that had left the town with such a send-off less than a week earlier. When Hawtin Mundy and Sid Carroll eventually joined them in training at Chelmsford they met up once again with many of their old school and workmates. Most of the first recruits from Wolverton and New Bradwell were seen in great style by the town a few weeks after the outbreak of war and left to join the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry at Cowley. Frank Gillard was one of those swept along on this initial wave of enthusiasm.

The young men of Wolverton and New Bradwell responded magnificently to the call to arms. Just what dent this made in the district’s youthful resources was not immediately realised. The Wolverton Express carried reports on the prospects for the coming football season, but in mid September there were reports of the abandonment of fixtures until furthere notice because of the enlistment of players in the Forces. If we use the Wolverton Express as a barometer, life apart from this hiccup, continued as normal, although the early days of the War did bring worries as to Wolverton’s vulnerability to enemy attack. In the edition of August 21st, 1914, the Express carried a story under the headline “Creating a War Panic” about the monthly meeting of the Wolverton Parish Council.

This letter is dated 30th October 1914

Jim and Jack Stallard were killed in action in November 1914.

These cries of anguish from the Stallard brothers went apparently unheard by the people at home, as did the brief mention of their deaths in November 1914. Certainly the young volunteers in training were blissfully unaware of what was happening. Frank Gillard recalls his early training.

The Wolverton Express kept readers up to date with the activities of the Bucks Territorials in training at Chelmsford. There were weekly eye-witness accounts of the Battalion’s formal and informal activities.

Hawtin Mundy was one of the Territorials at Chelmsford and he remembers an early morning parade.

The soldiers eventually left training camps in England to go to France and when they did they took with them the words of Lord Kitchener

The local Bradwell and Wolverton men in the Bucks Territorials let their training camp in Chelmsford for France in March 1915, as Hawtin Mundy recalls