Requiem by David Knight

  East Garston at War - and it's War Casualties.

 

 

World War 1
World War 2
The Home Front
A Brief Chronology of  Village Life
Acknowledgements

 


In April 2009 I had the privilege of taking over the tending of East Garston's War Memorial, the previous incumbent having left the village.The names on the memorial became very familiar to me, so much so that I felt the need to find out more about the men behind the names. Fifteen in WW1 and four in WW2

In order to research the village's war casualties a three pronged approach would be required. Firstly to establish their identities in the context of village life, bearing in mind that their lives were tragically short, secondly to define their military records and, finally, to incontrovertibly tie these two sets of data together.

 

The "village" approach, using the relevant censuses (1891,1901 and 1911,) produced only 4-5 likely matches for name and age. The "military" approach was far more fruitful however, particularly when using the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which claims to hold the records of some one and three-quarter million service personnel killed in either WW1 or WW2.

 

There is a caveat in that 60% of the WW1 records were destroyed by fire during a German bombing raid in WW2. On the positive side the search requirements are relatively undemanding and it was possible to elicit responses simply by inputting a surname. But, with very little information to go on, the range of matches for the various names differed widely. "David Kibblewhite Pounds" produced only one match whereas, at the other end of the spectrum, there were 199 matches for "Alfred Lewis" Most names fell in the 30 - 70 range.

 

This was not as daunting a prospect as might be imagined since, at the time of WW1, mobility in rural areas such as East Garston was relatively low.

 

Would-be soldiers tended,therefore, to migrate to the recruiting stations of their local regiments, in our case the Royal Berkshire Regiment (nicknamed "the Biscuit Boys" because of the close proximity, in Reading, of Brock Barracks, their headquarters, to the Huntley and Palmer biscuit factory) With this in mind it was possible to identify 8 village men who had enlisted with the Royal Berks, although some of the details required substantiating. Each of the remaining 7 men were later traced as serving with other regiments.                                             David Knight

 

 

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East Garston War Memorial