A number of communities in the county marked the war service of their inhabitants by awarding parchments in 1918-1919. There are a number of examples issued by the Borough of Aylesbury in 1919. In this case, Quainton General War Committee issued such a certificate to Arthur Franklin of the 1/1st Bucks Battalion in March 1918.
Born in May 1894, Franklin was a farm labourer from Church Street, Quainton and a pre-war Territorial who enlisted in the Bucks Battalion in November 1912. Franklin took the Imperial Service Obligation indicating his willingness to go overseas on 22 August 1914 and proceeded to France with the battalion in March 1915, serving in ‘D’ Company. Promoted Lance Sergeant in July 1915 he acted as company accountant until September. He received eight days’ home leave in December 1915 but then suffered from influenza in February 1916. Promoted sergeant in March 1916 he was severely wounded by shrapnel in the right ankle and leg on 20 July 1916 during the battalion’s operations at Pozières on the Somme. An attack was made by ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies at 0215 hours on 21 July with ‘D’ Company in reserve but the battalion had been forming up for the attack and moved forward to the front line at 2230 hours on the previous evening, and had come under fire. Something of the efficiency of the medical arrangements can be discerned from Franklin being transferred from 1/3rd South Midland Field Ambulance through No 3 Casualty Clearing Station to No 2 Australian General Hospital at Wimereux on 21 July and sent home on the hospital ship and former Great Eastern Railways ferry at Harwich, the St George on 22 July. Franklin’s wound was sufficiently severe for him to be invalided out as physically unfit for further service in September 1917 with 100% disability. Scars had healed but he could not walk far or stand without a stick and had to wear special boots. He received a disability pension in 1920.
The Trust has a similar certificate for his elder brother, Benjamin, who served in the 1st Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Ben was reported killed in action against the Turks in Mesopotamia on 10 June 1916 but it transpired that he had been captured at Kut and died in captivity in 1918.
Established in August 1914, the Quainton General War Committee, the minutes for which survive in the Buckinghamshire Archives, was one of many local welfare committees set up to support servicemen. At Christmas 1916, for example, it spent £27.1s.0d on providing 103 Christmas parcels for men from the village in the forces. By April 1918 it was said to have raised £1,000 during the course of the war for its work from such fund raising events as fêtes, whist drives, jumble sales, and evenings of folk song entertainment. Each serviceman also had a nominated village ‘visitor’ who corresponded with him. The committee chairman, the Rev. Proby L. Cautley had been Rector of Quainton since 1890 and would be succeeded as rector by his son, the Rev. Proby F. L. Cautley. The latter had been assisting his father and was the committee’s secretary. The other committee members signing the parchment were the vice chairman, the Baptist minister, Rev. Henry Lester, who succeeded Cautley as committee chairman in May 1918; the treasurer, the postmaster and farmer, George Read; and Joseph Mole, a former railway platelayer who was the chairman of the Parish Council.
