The following account of the fight at famous Hill 60 is an extract from a letter received from the officer son of a well-known Luton man.

On Sunday, the 10th (April), I went into the trenches , expecting it to be for eight days. However, it was not until the 12th day that we came right back. By this time what was left deserved it, and you can imagine the relief it was to us after going through perhaps the most severe fighting and the hardest fought battle since the war started.

Without any ceremony, three Luton men left the town on April 19th, 1915, on an errand of mercy to the war front. Mr Arthur Brown, Mr C. R. Clay and Mr Rupert Plummer were bound for the battlefield, each in charge of a new Red Cross car to be used to transport wounded soldiers from as near to the firing line as it is possible for the cars to be taken and from there to a hospital train.

From the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph, April 17th, 1915.

A Territorial from Luton with the North Midland Royal Field Artillery was charged at the Borough Court this morning with being absent without leave.

This is the biggest thing of the war. This is the biggest thing that this war has given us yet, and I have been in it all from the time when we fell back, yard upon yard and mile upon mile, from Mons, with lumps of lead going into every other man, and the man who didn't get it falling down and going to sleep because he couldn't march any further.

In times when so much attention is being attracted by the Army, the Navy and Territorial Force, to say nothing of the new Volunteer Training Corps movement, the National Reserve is not coming very much before the public eye.

Men at Biscot camp were not the first to respond to an appeal for soldiers to help control the 1919 Peace Day rioters, according to the Luton Reporter newspaper. It said an officer present outside the burning Town Hall offered to go for help, but, being unfamiliar with the locations of local camps, he arrived at Beech Hill Remount Depot instead of Biscot Camp.

From The Luton News, April 15th, 1915.

A man who held a prominent position on the staff of Luton hat manufacturers A. Warren and Son, of Bute Street, before rejoining his old regiment was given a commission while serving at the front as a Territorial.

Tsingtau was a port created by the Germans in China that became the base for her East Asia Naval Squadron patrolling the Pacific. When Japan declared war on Germany in August 1914 it became the focus of a siege that was the first confrontation between the two powers.

Lutonian Mr J. W. Bateman was in Tsingtau in August 1914 and returned there at the end of the siege, when the port was then under Japanese control.

There were many Bedfordshire casualties reported in lists published on April 8th, 1915.

KILLED

Pte Ernest Allen, 4/3837, 2nd Battalion, March 12th, 1915 (Le Touret Memorial)

L-Cpl Albert Edward Bandy (18), 4/6862, 2nd Battalion, March 10th, 1915 (Le Touret Memorial)

Pte Percy John Boness (21), 9650, 2nd Battalion, March 12th, 1915, (Le Touret Memorial)

Pte Bertram Breacher, 7814, 2nd Battalion, March 12th, 1915 (Le Touret Memorial)

Thanks to The Luton News via the Press Association, Mayor Henry Impey was able to announce the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty from the Town Hall balcony on June 28th, 1919, within minutes of the event.

From the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph, April 10th, 1915.

In a letter from the front, Surrey Street School old boy Pte J. A. Gurney wrote of his narrow escape at the battle of Neuve Chapelle.

The "lucky" 13th sole survivor of a section of men who fought at the battle of Neuve Chapelle wrote to a relative in Luton about his horrific experiences.

"I can tell you I think myself lucky to get through five days of fighting such as that, and I hope I shall be just as lucky in the next attack," wrote Pte F. W. Smith, 16939, King's Company, 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards, in his letter to Mr Harry Smith at 66 Highbury Road, Luton. His letter went on to detail his involvement in the battle.

Mount Tabor Sunday School Roll of Honour.

2641 Rifleman Oscar H. Bigmore, D Company, 17th County of London King's Royal Rifles.

I-17450 Frederick Weedon, 6 Mess, HMS Astraea

3643 William Richardson, F Company, 5th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment

3807 Ernest Richardson, F Company, 5th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment

4216 William Fuller, C Company, No 2 Section, 5th Battalion Bedfordshire Reserves

1475 Thomas Skelton, 2nd Field Company, East Anglian Royal Engineers

From The Luton News, April 8th, 1915.

Mr W. Stuart Caine, an assistant master at Beech Hill School until the outbreak of war,was pictured in India, serving with G Company, 4th Somerset Light Infantry, in Jullundur [Jalandar] Cantonment in the Punjab.

Unfortunately, one cannot record that there has been any material improvement in the condition of the boater trade since the last report was issued, wrote the local correspondent of the Hatters Gazette.