Horace John William Crump was one of two men to die following an accident at the George Kent munition works at Chaul End on January 8th, 1917.
Born and bred in Caddington, he had moved to live at 90 Ash Road, Luton, with wife Ada Elizabeth and their seven children. The bricklayer's labourer was working as a labourer at the Chaul End works at the time of his death.
Sgt Herbert Bunyan, 11446, 2nd Battalion Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment), was killed in action at Hooge in Flanders on August 9th, 1915, and was buried in Sanctuary Wood.
He enlisted in the Midland Regiment about four years earlier when his family lived at 16 Park Place, Park Street, Luton. He was born in Caddington in 1891, although Press reports gave his age as 22.
News of Sgt Bunyan's death had reached parents Hugh and Eliza Bunyan, then living at 84 Langley Road, Luton, three weeks before the official notification arrived on August 31st.
Pte Horace Mardle, 4065, 1/5th Bedfords, died on August 16th from wounds received the previous day in Gallipoli. He was aged 31 and the first employee of the English and Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Societies Ltd Cocoa Works in Dallow Road, Luton, to be killed. He enlisted a year earlier and became one of the late Lieut Shoosmith's gun team.
Pte Frederick Keen, 3/8793, 1st Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was killed in action at Hill 60 in Flanders on April 21st, 1915. He was born in Caddington and his family home was in Luton.
Private Archer (Archie) Godfrey, 3/6526, 1st Battalion, Beds Regt, was killed in action on November 9th, 1914. He was aged 23.
Born in Caddington the son of Alfred and Elizabeth Godfrey, of The Green, he was listed in the 1911 Census as a bricklayer. At the time of his death his family had lived at 32 St Saviour's Crescent, Luton, for two years.
The Union (Baptists and Independents) chapel was built in 1846 and a Sunday School building was added at the rear in 1889, but Baptists at Caddington go back much further. Episcopal visitations made by the Bishop of Lincoln to Bedfordshire in the early 18th century always asked how many nonconformists there were in a parish. Returns in that time note the following numbers: 1706 “many Anabaptists”; 1709 fourteen or fifteen families of Anabaptists; 1712 nine families of Anabaptists; 1717 “Numbers, I know not”; 1720 “I am strange to their Teachers and to the numbers of their Congregation”.
John Percy Wood, one of sixteen children, from Slip End, nr. Luton enlisted as a volunteer aged 18 and joined Lord Kitcheners Army on the 26th May 1915 at Luton, he was assigned Army number 2219, he undertook a medical examination, to test his fitness for active service, at Wardown Park Hospital and was judged as good.
He was assigned to the 2nd/5th Staffordshire Royal Field Artillery Battery, 2/3rd North Midland Artillery Brigade, he undertook his training at Biscot Huts, an Army Camp near to Biscot Mill, Luton.
