The Kitchener Battalions Project

It all began in the Autumn of 1992 when Reading University Extra-mural Department offered a course of study on the Royal Berkshire Regiment in the First World War. It set out to identify sources and collect information about the regiment and in particular it focussed on three of the Kitchener volunteer battalions, the 5^th, 6^th and 8^th. Several members of the course dropped out fairly quickly but, under the tutelage of Colin Fox, the four remaining members, John Chapman, Ian Cull, Martin McIntyre and Len Webb began accumulating an immense amount of information and the decision was taken to publish a book on our findings. The project was joined for a brief period by Barry Croucher who was a librarian working in Reading Central Library.

This tied in very well with another project running within the University in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communications and students Edwin Collingwood and Jeremy Spinks were assigned to publish the first volume as part of their course work. This duly appeared in 1995 as ‘Responding to the Call’ covering the activities of the three battalions in 1915. Major General Robin Grist of the newly formed Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment wrote the forward and began to establish links with both the Regiment and the Regimental Museum in Salisbury.

The second volume ‘On the Somme’ appeared in 1996 produced by student Jonathan Nock with a forward by Colonel John Hill who served with the Regiment from 1938 to 1961 and who had previously written of the Regiment in Burma in the Second World War.

The third volume entitled ‘Arras to Cambrai’ was published in 1997 by student Catherine Hollingworth and with a forward by Professor Richard Holmes of Cranfield University and TV fame.

The series was completed in 1998 with ‘Their Duty Done’ which covered 1918 by students Julie Colman and Laura Gingell and a forward by Peter Simpkin, of the Imperial War Museum.

By this time John Chapman had been appointed as one of the Trustees of the RGBW (Salisbury) Museum and this opened access to the regimental archives thanks to the enthusiasm and cooperation of curator Major John Peters.

The several members of the project each brought particular expertise ranging from computer to language and investigative skills and, using those skills and the increasing power of modern personal computers, we were able to organise the vast collection of information which we uncovered and throw new light on several aspects of the first world war. Martin McIntyre was a police inspector and was able to make contact with the families of many of the men who served in the Royal Berks and extract copies of diaries and personal papers. Len Webb was an inveterate researcher at the PRO and painstakingly sifted through medal rolls and other papers. Colin Fox was able to use his command of German and his immense knowledge of the western front to uncover the enemy side of the picture and provide a balance between detail and the strategic overview. John Chapman with his background both in museums and the IT industry captured and organised text and data on the computer and Ian Cull brought his expertise with computers and statistics to analyse data and provide statistics which yielded new insights.

Then in March 2000 Colin Fox sadly died, but such was the interest that had been generated in all members of the team the research continued and we finally resolved to publish a further series to cover the Regular and Territorial Battalions beginning with the 1^st Battalion, which we hope to publish in 2003.

Relations with the Regimental Museum deepened with the appointment as curator of Lt Col David Chilton, one of the Army’s computer experts. He has begun a programme to capture even more information in digital form, initially to provide the Wiltshire Regiment with a body of information similar to that which the Project had compiled but latterly he has used his small army of volunteers to transcribe and publish the Royal Berkshire War Diaries as well. Between the Museum and the Project we have been handling a substantial number of queries from researchers all over the world, mainly interested in knowing of the doings of their forebears and many of these family historians have come forward with even more material.

Over the period of the project we have been fortunate to make contact with researchers of other regiments and others who have made substantial contributions to our efforts. We like to feel that as a result of our efforts the Royal Berkshire Regiment is perhaps the best documented of all the regiments who participated in the first world war.

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