Acting Lieut-Colonel (Rev) Bernard William Vann VC, MC, DSO, 8th Battalion Sherwood Foresters (Notts & Derby Regiment), was killed in action in France on October 3rd, 1918.
Although born in Rushden, Northants, in 1887 and with a family living in Cirencester at the time of his death, he had been at one time an assistant master at St Gregory's School in Downs Road, Luton.
The story of Second-Lieutenant John (Jack) Hobbs, the son of a Toddington butcher, was one of heroism, romance and tragedy. It culminated in the posthumous award of the Military Cross, gained for gallant and distinguished service in the field on May 31st, 1915.
The Luton News devoted many column inches to the man who enlisted in the Royal Scots as a private and rose to become a second-liutenant, fell in love with and married a women with whom their days together were so few, and died on June 28th, 1915, from wounds sustained on the battlefield.
The award of the Military Cross to Luton-born Sec Lieut Walter William (Bill) Brown (Royal Field Artillery), who had originally enlisted in the Canadian Infantry when in North America in October 1914, was reported in the Tuesday Telegraph of January 14th, 1919. He was son of hat manufacturer Walter E. Brown and his wife Georgina, of 6 Dunstable Road, Luton.
Charles Samuel Irons was born in January 1898 in Luton, the only child of Samuel & Beatrice.
In 1911 Charles is living with his builder father & mother at 60a Park Street. The head of the household is Arthur Funnell, Beatrice's father, (Charles' grandfather) who is a furniture dealer.
An article in the Luton News on 20th February 1919 tells us that Charles was awarded the Military Cross, but could not give much detail. A report in The London Gazette dated 9th December that year reveals more information:
