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MEMORIES
AND INFORMATION - STAFFORDSHIRE HOME GUARD
25th STAFFORDSHIRE (BREWOOD) BATTN.
and
Cpl. HERBERT ANDERSON
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(This page of the
website is inspired by Mr. Mike Buckless of Rockingham,
West Australia - once a resident of Bilbrook and Four
Ashes and the grandson of Herbert Anderson - and much of the information within it is available
as a result of his diligent research over a long period).
Brewood and the surrounding area was defended by
the
25th Staffordshire (Brewood)
Battalion.
This Battalion was commanded
(in 1941) by Lt.-Col. C. Hatton
supported by Majors The Earl of
Bradford, W.R. Hodson and
A.G. Odgers; and 17 other officers -
Allen, Bell, Binckes, Biddle, Bould,
Brookes, Cheshire, Freeman, Gower, Jones, Hawkins,
Pearson, Prior, Thornton, Twigg, Walker and
Wilson.
(Capt. A.H. Cheshire - d. 1982
and pictured left -
was the Dr. Cheshire affectionately remembered by several
generations of Brewood residents. His surgery was in
Sandy Lane, Brewood. It
is not known whether he acted as Battalion Medical Officer
or served in a normal, general Home Guard role).
Another member of the local Home Guard was Mr.
Herbert
Anderson. Herbert's grandson, Mike
Buckless (who was himself delivered by Doctor Cheshire at
his parents' home in Mill Lane, Bilbrook) relates family memories of his
grandfather, Herbert (pictured in his youth, right).
Herbert Anderson
(1908-1982)
lived in Four Ashes
during the war years, later moving to
25 Oak Road, Brewood
where he spent the rest of his life. He is
shown
(right) in his youth.
Mike remembers being told by
his grandfather that a German plane dropped a bomb into
the River Penk at
Summerford which caused
the tiles to come off Herbert's roof. Mike's mother used
to clean her father's uniform buttons and boots. Herbert
said that there were dugouts in the woods behind
Brewood Grammar School
and these could still be seen many years later. Long after
the war ended Herbert still had part of his kit and also
his rifle - there are memories from the 1960s of the
latter still sitting behind the door at his home at Four
Ashes.
The
Battalion made use of the
Jubilee Hall in Brewood for its activities. That
building had only been opened a few years previously in
order to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of King George V in
1935 and had replaced the old
Angel Hotel.
Below is a photograph of the Brewood Home Guard. It was
taken at an unknown date in a field off
Vicarage Road and shows
The Vicarage in the background. The field itself
later became the site of
Westhall Close and Hall
Farm Road, Brewood.
(Click on image to
view expanded version)
Some members of the
Brewood unit are remembered although they have not all
been located in this image:
Cpl. Herbert Anderson (grandfather of Mike Buckless):
3rd row from front - 4th from
left.
Capt./Dr. A. H.
Cheshire (a well-loved and respected Brewood doctor
- see above):
3rd row
from front - 6th from left.
Ted Gordon (future son-in-law of William Holt,
worked at Boulton & Paul):
Back row - 7th from right
Lt.-Col.
Hatton (Battalion commander, possible
identification):
3rd row
from front, centre, with peaked cap
Geoff Holt (son of William Holt, emigrated to
Canada in 1948):
Back row
- 4th from left
Gerald Holt
(younger son of William Holt):
Front row, 4th from right
William Holt (a tenant farmer on the Chillington
Estate):
2nd row from
front - 3rd from left
Ted
Slim (a veteran of Dunkirk who later joined the
Brewood Home Guard).
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LIFE
IN BREWOOD DURING WW2
Behind this brief
glimpse into the life of Herbert Anderson there
lies, of course, almost six years of a wartime
existence which he and hundreds of his
contemporaries in Brewood and the local area
experienced.
Fragments of those lives survive
in newspaper reports of that time. An
associated page within this website contains a
number of these reports: they enable us to gain an
idea of the many ways, trivial and more
significant, in which WW2 might have affected the
residents of Brewood.
Please click the
title above to access this information.
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Acknowledgements
Grateful
acknowledgement is made to Mr Michael J. Buckless of Rockingham,
Western Australia, grandson of Herbert Anderson, for
providing much of the information which appears on this
page and permitting its publication within this website;
and for inspiring the further work on newspaper sources
within the associated page. Mike was born in 1962 in Mill Lane, Bilbrook and
later lived at 187 Station Road, Four Ashes before
emigrating to Australia. Both he and staffshomeguard would welcome any
further information about the Brewood Home Guard and its
members. If you can help, please use the Feedback link
below to contact the staffshomeguard website; or
go to
the
GUESTBOOK page for
Mike's contact details (provided in a 2013 message).
Similar grateful acknowledgement is made to one of
the sources of the group image above: a print is known to
be owned by Mr. Paul Holt and appears within the
staffspasttrack website.
Much of the above information
about the image come from the latter source.
