Those who served

Young men in Bourne were quick to respond when the call to arms came with the outbreak of the First World War on 28th July 1914. Among the first to enlist for military service were fifteen recruits who left Bourne to join the Lincolnshire Regiment on Monday 31st August.

They are pictured above with the recruiting sergeant and an unknown lad outside the recruiting office which had been set up in West Street and were escorted to the railway station at the Red Hall to catch the train to Lincoln by the recruiting sergeant and the town's brass band with a large number of residents following behind to give them a hearty send-off. It was to be the first of many such farewells from friends and relatives in town and village.

During the following months, crowds flocked to regular recruiting meetings that were held at the Corn Exchange and in the Market Place where stirring patriotic speeches were given by civic leaders with the slogan “Your country needs you”, an emotional appeal to young men, some of them still boys, who flocked to enlist and fight for their country.

In 1915, a detachment of 250 men from the Lincolnshire Regiment accompanied by a pipe band visited Bourne to press the message home that more men were needed at the front and hundreds turned out for another rousing meeting to attract recruits. Until then, all were volunteers but in 1916 the government introduced conscription and by the end of the war in November 1918 one in four of the male population in the United Kingdom had joined up, a total of more than five million men.

It is not known exactly how many from Bourne went to war but with a population of 4,343 at that time (1911 census) it is estimated that the figure was around 250 and they served mainly with the Lincolnshire Regiment and other infantry units, but also in the cavalry and the guards, the Machine Gun Corps, the Royal Field Artillery, the Tank Corps, medical and ambulance units, the Royal Navy and the Royal Flying Corps.

The War Memorial in South Street originally recorded the names of 97 men who died in action but later research established that 37 names were missed off when it was erected in 1956 and these were added in 2015 and so the total from Bourne who made the supreme sacrifice was 134.

NOTE: The recruits in the photograph with Recruiting Sergeant George Todd and an unknown lad, were: Arthur Maxon, Fred W Savage, John Thomas Baldock, George Sherwin, George Carver, Frank Baldock (married), H Cleary, W Herbert Bloodworth, Percy J Vickers, Walter Parker (married), Ernest Robinson, Harry Darnes, Joseph Smith, Walter Archer and Percy Cave (Witham-on-the-Hill).

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