WAR EXHIBITION: REMEMBERING LATHBURY IN 1914

In the centenary year of the start of World War One, memories and  accounts are being revisited far and wide. But you don't need to look far to find the effects of the conflict - Historian John Taylor has covered them in depth in his current books Home Fires and Newport Pagnell during the First World War. And in Lathbury, residents have been researching the part their village played.  Their findings will be on display in an exhibition being held in the village this week. Thirty men from the village outside of Newport Pagnell enlisted to serve.  Six never returned. Walter Dorrill died at the Battle of Ypres. He was shot in the arm, and said to a comrade who bandaged him: 'I hope you get wounded as well, then we can both go home and have a holiday together.' Almost immediately afterwards, he was struck by another bullet, this time to the head. His body was never recovered. In 1915 Tom Bennett wrote a letter to Mr Lovell at the Ram Inn in Newport Pagnell, thanking him for a parcel, and commenting on the situation: 'There has been a lot of hard fighting round here. but the German's will soon be fairly on the run. "I think they have very nearly had enough of us and will soon give up,' he wrote. But the war continued for a further three years. The exhibition is being housed at the Village Hut, Northampton Road, Lathbury (Sat Nav it: MK16 8JX) on Saturday and Sunday (July 5 and 6), between 2pm and 5pm daily. The show will be supplemented by a talk on the war poets and readings of the letters from the Front (Saturday, 3-4pm) and a talk on the humour of war and poetry readings (Sunday 3-4pm) A special service of commemoration will also be held in Lathbury Church, on Sunday morning from 11am.