Exeter in the Great War (Your Towns & Cities in the Great War) by Derek Tait

Author:Derek Tait [Tait, Derek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 2: HIS015000, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain, HISTORY / Military / World War I, Bisac Code 1: HIS027090
ISBN: 9781473853904
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2015-02-27T22:00:00+00:00

On 15 June, the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette announced the commencement of enrolment in the Volunteer Force in Exeter. Magistrates present were Mr W Kendall King, an ex-mayor of Exeter, Mr James Stokes and Mr Joseph Gould. Altogether, 101 men took the oath of allegiance to the king and swore to ‘faithfully serve His Majesty in Great Britain for the defence of the same against his enemies and oppressors whatsoever’. Volunteers upwards of ninety men had already been transferred to the reserves. The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette went on to report:

Exeter is assured of a Company but this certainly should not be considered sufficient. In a city with a population of 60,000, surely two Companies, the full strength of which is 500 men, should be forthcoming. The old objection that some people had that the volunteers had no status, has now, of course, disappeared and it is the duty of every able-bodied man, who has a few hours of leisure at his disposal each week – and practically everybody is in that position – to stand boldly forward and declare himself willing to bare arms in the defence of his hearth and home. The men who have already enrolled comprise of representatives of the professional, business and artisan classes and they are ready to work shoulder to shoulder for the benefit of their country.

The Western Times of 19 June reported that the Devon and Cornwall Branch of the National Poor Law Officers’ Association was held at the Exeter City Workhouse, presided over by Mr E. Birch of Devonport. He said that it wasn’t just sufficient to relieve poverty but to find the cause of it. He spoke of the hardship felt by soldiers and their families. The paper reported:

Even this week, he had heard of a case in Plymouth where a soldier had returned from the front wounded, had been discharged from hospital recovered, but had been discharged from the Army as unfit for further service and was in great need for himself his wife and children.

He went on to say: ‘There will be thousands of such cases when the war is over and it is for the officers entrusted with the duties of relieving the poor and needy to speedily consider this subject and formulate some scheme which would be of a national service and a blessing to mankind.’

As the Battle of the Somme raged in Europe, relatives back in Exeter dreaded a knock on the door, as they had throughout the war, of the telegram boy bringing news of their loved ones’ deaths. Newspapers carried the news of all wounded and killed soldiers.

The death columns of the local newspapers provided a pointer to the extent of the tragedies of Jutland and of the first battle of the Somme. An eye-witness reported:

We passed along the line of German ships some miles away. The air was heavy with masses of smoke black, yellow, green, of every colour, which drifted between the opposing lines. Again and again salvoes of shells fell short of the mark.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.