Royston's Call to Arms - Volume 2, Letters and Interviews from a Market Town in Hertfordshire, France and Flanders 1916-1919, by Yolanda Hayes
Booklet published by the Royston and District Local History Society in 2017, 96 pages. Spiral bound A5 size booklet (N6792PE)
This booklet collects together letters, stories and accounts written during the later part of the First World War by soldiers (and civilians) who came from the Hertfordshire town of Royston, and who spent time or served on the western front...
From the introduction: While carrying out research to update the Douglas Plowman's War Memorial Book, I began reading the 1914-1918 editions of the Royston Crow, the local newspaper. I came across interviews, letters, stories and reports from men born in Royston and the surrounding villages who either lived or worked in the town.
It is now over a 100 years since the start of the war and Volume 2 begins in 1916, the year which introduced the Derby Scheme where it was compulsory to conscript men between the ages of 18 and 40 to serve. With censorship, few letters from the 'Fronts' appeared in the paper.
In this volume you will read stories of valour, sacrifice, and the personal experiences of prisoners of war. A civilian interviewed upon her return to Royston at the end of 1918, Grace daughter of Charles Bullard, a retailer in the High Street, had left Royston in the spring of 1914 to teach English as a Governess to a Belgian family at Charleroi. Her experience provides an insight to the depravation in Flanders during this period
For the authencity of the period, all letters and the interviews have been transcribed from the Royston Crow as spoken and or written in the language of the time.
The condition of the booklet is generally very good. The cover is clean and bright, with only one or two very minor scuffs, the spiral binding is tight and intact, and all pages are clean, intact, unblemished and tightly bound. There is a small price sticker on the rear side cover.