In one of my very first blog posts about the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) during the First World War, I wrote on the row within the Association over the sale of alcohol within its recreation huts. The Associati…
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This week marks 100 years since the celebration across Britain of 'Peace Day', the Bank Holiday to celebrate the end of the First World War and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. A Victory Parade in central Londo…
'To do good rather than be good' was how founder of the Scouting Movement, Lieutenant-General Robert Baden-Powell described the First World War work of the Young Men's Christian Association. In a 1916 letter he hai…
In the Summer of 1914, the nineteen-year-old Wilfred Wynter-Morgan was living on his widowed mother's farm in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire. He had evidently shown promise from an early age, attending private school at the nea…
Gordon John Seeley was, in 1914, an ordinary clerk, working in a small legal office of a rural town. In 1918 he returned to home to Dursley a war hero, with a parade in his honour and his actions celebrated in the national pre…
In the war poetry of both Ivor Gurney and FW Harvey, their mutual love of their Gloucestershire home shines through, intensifying as their separation from their beloved county grew. Having grown up in Gloucestershire myself, t…
As each Spring sees the supermarket shelves fill with chocolate eggs and chickens, many Christians begin to fret that the "real" meaning of Easter is being lost. Yet this fear is not new, and even during the First Wo…
YMCA poster, 1918 ( source ) During the First World War up to 40% of the YMCA's staff on the Western Front were female. It is likely that the percentage working in the British base camps was even higher. In part, this was…
In much of my research into my local t territorials, the Fifth Glosters, I have come across the name of Raymond E Knight, a soldier who rose from the ranks to be a Second Lieutenant. Not only was he a man local to me, coming …
Sketches at Gallipoli, by Leslie Hore ( NSW PXE 702 ) In the summer of 1915, Wilton Rix, a Congregationalist minister from Oxted in Surrey embarked on the longest journey of his life to join the YMCA in their work in Egyp…
In the war poetry of both Ivor Gurney and FW Harvey, their mutual love of th…