The Barton Boys: Lost but not forgotten

Arthure Frederick Packwood - my dads grandad - killed in September 1918

As we approach Armistice day this coming Sunday conversations with family members sometimes turn to their involvement in war. My dad, 93 and living in Hereford, but born in Earles Barton Northamptonshire , doesn’t mention his service in the RAF much and until this week had virtually never mentioned his grandad’s service in WW1.

Couldn’t stop him chattering away this week because he had  just been sent a book – The Barton Boys – which lists all of the Earls Barton men who went away to the first and second world wars and who didn’t come back.

Whoever put this book together should be applauded. It’s full of fascinating facts – like the chap who was sent to Indonesia and got eaten by a crocodile – and apart from anything else shows us that even if the men are no longer here, we’ve kept enough records of that time that they most deservedly shouldn’t ever be forgotten.

Back to dad. At his age he can barely remember what happened this morning let alone the best part of a century ago, but he does. His eyes lit up as I read him the stories of the first world war soldiers – the grandads and fathers of his school friends. Mainly they worked in the shoe trade – and volunteered as soon as war broke out. In the second war chapter, they were actually the lads that he went to school with.  He remembered them all.

But of course his favourite part is his own grandad’s page. Arthur Frederick Packwood, a Private in the Northamptonshire Regiment. He had been in France since 1916. In the summer of 1918 he was quite badly injured and sent to the rear to recuperate. Once he was well enough – and because by that time the army was running out of men - he was sent back to the front. Not well enough to fight, he was put on stretcher bearing duty.

He was killed by a shell on 18^th September 1918 along with two of the other stretcher bearers and the person they were carrying. The end of the war was less than two months away.

Sobering stuff

…and the reason he doesn’t mention his part in WW2 much is that thankfully very little happened. He was going to be a navigator and towards the end of the war they shipped him off to Burma. They never got there and were sent to India instead. He spent a few months training - where he happily recalls trying to knock a tin can off a pole during hand grenade throwing practice, but never succeeding – but rarely if ever got onto a plane.

Interestingly there is now a Packwood Road in Earles Barton. A new estate has just been built and the builder chose the street names from the local war memorial where Arthur Frederick is mentioned.