Private Hudson served with the 5th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment in Gallipoli in August 1915. His family donated his pocket diary to the Wardown Museum and it will be on display at the WW1 exhibition from 5th August 2014.

Private Turner served with the 5th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment in Gallipoli and was wounded in August 1915. His family donated photographs and papers to Wardown Museum and these will be on display in the WW1 exhibition from 5th August 2014.

Lance Corporal Huggins served with the 8th Bedfordshire Regiment in France from August 1915 and he survived the war. His family have donated photographs, service papers and his travelling clock and pocket book to Wardown Museum and these will be on display in the WW1 Exhibition from 5th August 2014.

James Clarke of Tavistock St, Dunstable served 12 years with the Royal Navy before transferring to the Royal Navy Reserve in 1908. When WW1 commenced the thirty six year old  was called up to  to serve aboard HMS Hogue which was part of a patrol of armoured cruisers in the North Sea. These old slow  ships were very vulnerable to a raid by modern German surface ships and the patrol was nicknamed the "live bait squadron".

Private Betts of Ashton Road Luton served with the  Mounted Field Ambulance Division of the Royal Army Medical Corps. He arrived at  Gallipoli on 7th October 1915 and died of wounds on 10th October 1915.

Letters from his commanding officer and fellow servicemen and his Memorial Plaque were donated to Wardown Park Museum by his great neice and will be on display at the WW1 Exhibition from 5th August 2014.

My first cousin twice removed (his father, John Barrett, was a brother of my great-grandmother), Ernest Ethelred Barrett had been a house-painter at the time of the 1911 census of Luton, aged 16, living in the family home at 53 Hibbert Street. He enlisted on 9 September 1914 into the Royal Engineers, as a Sapper, (Army No. 1515) and was posted to E.A. Division RE. He later became a Driver, (Army No. 524183) and served throughout the Great War.

Herbert John Odell (a nephew of my great-grandfather, and my first cousin twice removed!) was born in 1892, and like his father John (with whom he lived at 25 North Street, Luton) was a plasterer by trade. He was called up for service on 23 March 1916, and was first enrolled in 6th Royal Fusiliers (Army No. 6700), later transferring to 1/7th Middlesex Regt. (Army No. 203962). He was posted to France on 9 June 1916, but on 16 August 1916, while he was cleaning his rifle, the weapon went off, wounding his left arm, resulting in the amputation of the arm below the elbow.

Archibald (Archie) Odell was an older brother of my paternal grandmother (he was my great-uncle). He was enlisted at St Albans into the 24th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regt. (The Queen's) on 4 September 1914, aged 29. He was posted as a Private (Army No. 2531) with the Expeditionary Force to France on 15 March 1915, but was wounded by a gunshot wound to the throat on 25 May 1915, and sent back to UK on 5 June 1915. He was discharged from the Army on 11 February 1916.

Frederick Howard Harman was a son of George Edward Harman and his wife Amelia (formerly Shoosmith), who lived at 20 Stockwood Crescent, Luton. He had been born in 1883 in Southampton, and had married in 1909, moving to Watford to live.

He had joined the Bedfordshire Regiment, but later transferred to 14th Royal Irish Rifles. He was killed at Ypres on 16 August 1917. He left his widow, Amy, and two small sons. His death is marked on the Harman family gravestone in Rothesay Road cemetery in Luton.

Charles Smith Neale, a hat packer by trade before the War, enlisted into the Army in December 1915, and was posted into the Army Veterinary Corps (Army No. 16205). He was later posted to the RFA (Army No. 155728). He was discharged in May 1918 as "no longer physically fit for war service".

Having served from 1908 to 1913 in the Territorial Army (Army No. 1554) with 54th Div. RE, Sydney Brown enlisted in the Royal Engineers in November 1914. Between 1914 and 1918 he served with various units (Army No. 524621, including East Anglian Field Coy RE, and in May 1918 he joined 69 Field Coy RE. He was appointed L/Cpl on 8 August 1918. On 29 March 1919 he was transferred to Class "Z", Army Reserve, on demobilisation.

My Grandfather, Robert Wright, volunteered to join the army on 12 June 1914 – the day before his 26th birthday. This was clearly before hostilities had been declared, but by this time it was looking more and more certain that a war was approaching. I have a copy of his four year Attestation Papers, and according to these he was first assigned to the 5th Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment, but he was discharged in January 1915. I do not know why - the records have presumably been lost.

William Thomas Panter, Pte/Cpl, (or bill as he was known), joined the army on 2nd Feb 1914 at Kempston Barracks, which covered a considerable area in those days, (just the main entrance building remains today). 

Frederick Charles Foster was born in Luton in 1887.

In 1901 he his living with his large family at numbers 66 & 68 John Street, the family bakery. His father Charles is head of the family & is living at number 68 with his mother Marion & brothers Herbert 12, Arthur 9 & 2 year old Thomas. At the shop next door, number 66, 14 year old Frederick is living with his widowed grandmother Mary Foster, his aunt Edith 27, a straw hat machinist, aunt Esther 20, a domestic help, 1 year old cousin Leslie & boarders, Clifford & Edith Campbell who are actors.

Son of George and Ann Carter, brother to Harry, Ann, Matilda, Timothy, Frank, Walter and Thomas Carter.

His father is noted as a widower in the 1901 census, and remarried a Phoebe Graves in 1904. Interestingly, in 1904 Ben is listed as lodging with the Graves family in Highbury Road Luton, and is employed as a Straw Hat Blocker.