‘Loose Threads’ Your local history magazine Number 14 Special Issue commemorating life on Active Service and on the Home Front during the Great War and World War II The Journal of the Loose Area History Society £5 Answering the nation’s Call to Arms in Linton and the Loose Valley one hundred years ago Within a few months of the clothes and modest luxuries for declaration of war, 64 men from the men who had joined up and Linton volunteered to join the by August had raised £14.15s.3d. forces. Nineteen of them enlisted (about £1,300 in today's money). with the Queen's Own Royal West 'A valuable lesson of Kent Regiment or the West Kent what a village can do', said Mr Yeomanry, a few with the 5th Forrest. 'Linton always turns out Battalion The Buffs Royal East Kent all right when there is a need'. Regiment or the East Kent Blankets, shirts, pyjamas and Yeomanry; the rest with various socks were collected for the other units. The two regimental VAD Hospital in Hayle Place. areas were separated by the By February men by Medway, which also divides the the name of Boyce, Brice and 'Kentish Men' to the west from the Rayfield had enlisted, as had W. 'Men of Kent' to the east. Although Williams (National Reserve on this basis Linton and indeed the Guard), whose three sons were centre of Maidstone are arguably in already on active service. east Kent, the Royal West Kents, Nine months into the whose barracks were in Maidstone, war came news of Linton's first drew most local men into their casualty. Bert Wycherley of the ranks, rather than to the 3rd Monmouth Regiment, son of Canterbury-based Buffs. Emma Wycherley of the Bell Inn, Sadly, many of the first Coxheath, was killed on May 3 recruits and those who followed 1915 (a month after he joined them did not come home and are the Army) during the Second now remembered on Linton's war Battle of Ypres. May 3 was the memorial. day on which Canadian soldier After embarking for France John McCrae wrote his immortal and other war fronts, the soldiers poem 'In Flanders fields/the wrote to their families whenever poppies blow/Between the they could, and to the Vicar of crosses/row on row'. Linton, Rev. Jacob Forrest, who 'Kent has borne no published their letters in his parish mean share of the greatest magazine, together with his own war struggle for liberty to exist news. Fortunately the issues for which man has ever imposed on 1914-18 have been kept in St his kind’, commented Mr Nicholas Church ever since they Forrest. 'At last it comes to pass were published. that Linton has had to make her In September 1914 Mr contributions. But now the Forrest wrote: 'Sir Edward Grey, our tribute has been paid in life. The Foreign Minister, declined to be a name of Bert Wycherley is held traitor to either France or Belgium. in grateful and honourable On August 4 Belgium was invaded by memory in every Linton heart'. Germany but Sir Edward still asked if Three years later Mrs Germany would desist. There was no Wycherley, a widow, lost her reply and at midnight we were in a other son, Charles, of the Royal state of war with Germany. Every West Kents, who fell overboard man of us may yet have to go, for sacrifice is in front of us and we from a river boat and was drowned while serving with the mustn't draw back'. Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force. Neither brother has a known In 1915 Mabel Cornwallis of Linton Park, whose husband Lt grave. Bert is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial; Charles's Col. Fiennes Stanley Wykeham Cornwallis had once commanded the name is on the Basra Memorial to the Missing. Queen's Own Royal West Kent Yeomanry, set up a fund to buy Eight days after the first Zeppelin air raid on England killed four people and injured 16 others in Norfolk, the Mayor of Maidstone published the above notice on the precautions its citizens should take. On May 31 the air war came closer to home when Zeppelin LZ38 attacked London with 120 incendiary bombs, killing seven people and injuring 35. It was not until September 1915, with the establishment of the London Air Defence Scheme, that anti-aircraft guns and searchlights began to have much effect against the enemy’s airships. It has been said that Linton Park was hit by a bomb during the First World War but we have been unable to confirm this. 2 In July 1915 Mr Forrest wrote: think that so many brave fellows 'Another Linton name has to be were sacrificing their lives, for we enrolled among those who have can honestly say that this battle given their lives, that of [F C] accounted for some 1,200 men. Spurgeon. He was in the Australian 'Our division was contingent in the Dardanelles. He defending the line at Ypres, was connected with us for he previous to and during the great married Mrs Sharp's daughter of second battle. Here we first saw Coxheath. the real and destructive power of F N Farley (Army Service the 17-inch shell and also the Corps) wrote to say: 'I think all the effects of the first shell in Germans are all gone mad today Poperinge. It was pitiful to see the for the shells are dropping like civilians fleeing from their homes. hailstones all round'; George Our division suffered the ill-effects Fenner reported: 'I received the of gas shells and were forced to cigarettes in good condition. We leave their trenches. had a bath last week and I can tell 'In this short summary of you it was great'; George's brother nine months' service we should William said: 'I had a very narrow like to appeal to all those young escape last night. We were carrying men who have not yet realized the stretcher cases out of the wood arduous task that lies before us as just behind the trenches at Ypres a nation ... and to try to convince when my pal in front got a bullet themselves of a greater sense of through the right leg, catching the duty to replace the great numbers artery, and all he said was "Thank of those who have fallen (heroes the Lord, I'm for a Blighty. That's all), knowing that they had served Tommies' word for England'. their King and Country in this F N Farley, was in church hour of need while you have lived on June 27, looking 'bronzed, at home in apparent luxury'. cheery and full of go'. Next day Linton's latest volunteer, John Neal, departed for a training camp in 1916 York. In January Lieutenant O S M Leigh 'Some day John Neal will of the Royal Flying Corps was look back with pride to the day he recovering from 'a sudden joined the Army,' said Mr Forrest. acquaintance with shrapnel'; 'The choir and church have lost a Harold Feaver was a prisoner-of- good principled fellow who did his war; Robert Kneller was bit regularly and well'. recovering from wounds, but his brother Richard had been home In September Mr Forrest noted for Christmas, 'fit and hearty'. that Tom Williams (one of W Lance Corporal E Evans of the Williams's sons), who was in the RAMC was 'not far from the firing Royal Navy, 'is better of his wounds line and expecting to go up to the and hopping about alternately trenches any time'; and Jack Fryer afloat and ashore. He had a bayonet was in the eastern Mediterranean through his foot'. D French (Royal and complained 'one could never Veterinary Corps) wrote home to strike a more miserable spot than say 'I am back at my old station. I we have'. had a nice time at Havre and could 'Herbert Snashall turned see the ships coming in all night up on Tuesday after Christmas with troops from England. When I looking fat and well fed after many come home prepare for seeing a weeks in hospital in Alexandria and black boy. The sun's like a fire'. Then came a two-day march to the Manchester. He knows all about a place British trenches in Belgium and their first called Suvla Bay. Other people call it inferno After nine months of active service Privates experiences of modern warfare. and say it has simply awful memories'. An W H Fenner, W J Carter and E C Dalton of 'Field ambulances dealt with great amphibious landing at Suvla on the Gallipoli the Royal Army Medical Corps wrote home influx of sick and wounded. Most of the peninsula in August 1915 was the final, after landing at Le Havre where, after 'a former were troops from India and China unsuccessful, British attempt to break the hearty reception from the YMCA we began not acclimatized to treacherous winter deadlock of the Battle of Gallipoli. to realize the hardships of active service. We conditions' marched to a distant camp, arriving at 3am, At St Eloi on March 14 they were travelling for 23 hours on iron rations on involved in 'one of the sharpest battles of Above: Linton War Memorial on the day on Christmas Day followed by a ten mile march this war. It was a continual roar of cannon which it was dedicated. (® Maidstone Camera to small village'. for 12 hours and it made one's heart ache to Club) 3 After his leave Herbert transferred Harry Carman had a 'miraculous escape from the Royal West Kents to the London when a piece of shrapnel which wounded his Regiment to fight in the trenches on the hand went through a small Testament he had Western Front.