Town rekindles its wartime spirit

IN A climate of patriotism and civic pride, almost entirely lost today, Doncaster’s elected mayor was compelled to implore his townsfolk to lend him their last shilling.

“You have given your sons – you will not withhold your money,” boomed the fiercely Wesleyan George Raithby.

With the Great War in its third year, his words struck a chord.

A tank rolled into the market place as part of a monumental fundraising exercise, and £1,087,021 of bond certificates later, the Government’s war loan scheme declared Doncaster a “million-pound town”.

A century on, Raithby’s tubthumping spirit is being revived in a campaign to bring relief to today’s troops.

With money from the Heritage Lottery Fund as well as public subscription, the town will send 300 “comfort parcels” to troops in the Middle East this Christmas, just as it had done to the Western Front in 1917.

The recipients will be the men and women of the Rifles Regiment, successors to the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, which was based at Pontefract Barracks and had been the regiment to which many of Doncaster’s young men had gravitated.

The initiative, “From Donny with Love”, is part of a four-year project in the town to mark the centenary of the First World War.

The contents of this year’s comfort packs, however, will differ from those that went to the trenches.

“We’ve spoken to people from the regiment, and what they want is shower gel, toothbrushes, board games, books and puzzles – things to keep them entertained. They’ve got plenty of free time,” said Sam Armstrong, who is managing the project in Doncaster.

During the First World War, the demand had been for knitted mittens and socks, which were hand-stitched by well-wishers and by the pupils of Doncaster High School for Girls, which had opened just nine years before the war.

In December 1914, one of the students wrote in the school magazine that the girls had been knitting continuously and that any passing German had better shield his eyes from their knitting needles.

“The Rifles Regiment said specifically that they didn’t want anything knitted this time,” Ms Armstrong said. Doncaster lost more than 1,000 young men to the war effort, according to records held at the town’s library. The original effort was not confined to 300 parcels but involved thousands and spanned the duration of the war. It was augmented by fundraising events for soldiers, prisoners of war and the war effort, hosted by Doncaster Mansion House, and Raithby’s £1m would have been about 60 times as much in today’s money.

The visit of a tank to the town centre a century ago, inset, brought home to the locals the importance of the war bond drive, Ms Armstrong said.

It was one of a series of such exercises to bolster morale at towns across the country.

Today, it is the internet that will serve the same purpose, with online donations being accepted via the project’s website.

The Rifles said they didn’t want anything knitted this time. Sam Armstrong, manager of the From Donny with Love project.