Military Graves at Wool / Bovington

[Bob Chandler]

There are apparently 71 military graves in Wool churchyard, clearly connected with the camp & tank training grounds. I can understand the presence of RTR,RAC,REME etc but (and I appreciate this is probably a stupid question) why were infantry units like the 9th Royal Berks there? I am intrigued by the presence of 2 9th Royal Berks men in the listing for the churchyard from 1915/1916 as my granddad, who was a Royal Berks National Reservist, apparently spent time at Bovington. Would this have been connected with the tank presence in any way? If not, why were they there? The Royal Berks regimental history states that the 9th were ordered to Bovington in May 1915 where it later became the 37th Training Reserve Bn. but I would like to understand why they were there and what they were doing, if not tank-related.

Many thanks

Charles

[uncle bill]

Hello

The area around Wool -Bovington - Wareham was a huge training area as early as 1914. The 17th (Northern) Division trained in this area prior to leaving for the Western Front, as well as other numerous units.

[KevinBattle]

There are likely to be a host of reasons, but as you suspect it may well be with regard to infantry co operation exercises (though I doubt they were run over by tanks, more likely illness and injury whilst their units were in the locality). Another reason could simply be that they were not yet administratively part of the Tank Corps etc, but attached from their original battalions.

Obviously, there must have been infantry training carried out there before tanks came along!.

[mac]

Charles

The 9th Battalion started life as the training battalion for the 5th. 6th, 7th @ 8th (Service Battalions) .They started life as the 9th (resrve) Battalion in November 1914 at Portsmouth under the command of Lt Col R. Campbell In May 1915 they went to Bovingdon (Nothing to do with those beastly tanks)They trained many drafts of men for the front line battalions and at one time had as many as 197 officers and 2,500 other ranks on the books. In April 1916 they became the 37th Reserve Battalion. In effect a training unit.

Hope that helps

Cheers

MAC

[Moonraker]

Charles

... In May 1915 they went to Bovingdon ...

MAC

Typo? Bovingdon is in Hertfordshire. Bovington is in Dorset.

I've never been able to find out why the 9th Royal Berkshire and the 37th TRB were at Fovant, Wiltshire, where they added to the collection of badges and unit titles carved in the chalk hillside. Sadly, theirs were allowed to disappear after the war. I believe that the 9th Royal Berkshire title was carved before August 7, 1917 and the 37th TRB title after March 1917.

Moonraker

[ianw]

To confirm Uncle Bill's post earlier, I recall visiting the little town museum at Wareham and seeing a fair number of WW1 photos of troops that were in training in the local area.