World War One

Barwell Church of England School, c.1920. Courtesy of the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Mr Payne: Another recollection is the coming of the first world war, 1914-18. I was at day school and it was a sad experience going home one day, for my mother to have to say to us, your father has taken the King's shilling. Naturally, that was a puzzle to me, what did she mean by the King's shilling, and she said, ‘Unfortunately your father was persuaded by a local sergeant to take the King's shilling. Whatever induced him I don't know, but it is going to make things so difficult for me.’ I had been given the chance by WW Hill, of revered memory, to go to Hinckley grammar (school), he was confident he could get me through the scholarship, and when he asked my mother for her final opinion, I spoke for her, I said, ‘Mr. Hill as much as I would like extra education, it is impossible. I've got to be the breadwinner, my mother will merely have a soldier's allowance and as you know that is a mere pittance, and she has my brothers to think of too.’ Barwell was denuded of its manpower. Industry and local church life in particular suffered. Many of the young men one knew went off to the war and one never saw them again, and Barwell did pay a price for fighting German tyranny in those days of '14-'18. I happened to be at work one morning, I had just begun, it was my first year, and the foreman announced that news had come from London that the war had finished. Spontaneously everybody downed tools and everybody felt they had to process the streets and shout that, ‘Kaiser Bill's beaten’. And some of us, lured by the dance floor, walked all the way to Hinckley and had a grand romp in the old drill hall, now a DIY centre in New Buildings.

©EMOHA & David Wood