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£5 on the door, payable by cash or cardDuring the First World War, families throughout Willingham waited anxiously for letters and news of their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, husbands, fathers and uncles.
Some received the telegram they had been dreading. Others were told that a loved one was wounded or missing and endured weeks or months of uncertainty. A few families never discovered exactly how or where their relatives had died.
The war’s story does not belong solely to the men who fought overseas. Women cared for wounded servicemen, performed voluntary work, supported families and kept village life functioning through years of separation, shortage and bereavement.
One particularly poignant reminder can still be found in Willingham Cemetery: a First World War grave containing two sisters. Their story reminds us why this talk must commemorate the daughters of Willingham as well as its sons.
This illustrated Old Willingham talk will follow the experiences of the village and its people throughout the First World War. We will discover local men serving in different regiments and on different battlefields, brothers and neighbours who enlisted together, those who returned home and those who never came back.
The war also came directly to Willingham. The Parish Room in Church Street became an auxiliary hospital, with additional patients cared for at the Rectory. Local women and Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses helped tend wounded and convalescing servicemen while families continued to live with the war’s demands and constant uncertainty.
Using surviving photographs, military records, newspaper reports, graves and personal stories, we will try to put faces and lives back beside the names carved in stone. We will remember those buried here in Willingham, those commemorated in cemeteries and memorials overseas, and those whose final resting places were never identified.
This is a companion to October’s talk, Sons of Cambridgeshire and the Somme, but it will also stand completely on its own.
Please click “Going” on the Facebook event if you intend to join us, as this helps us estimate the number of seats required.
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Event venue
Willingham, CB24 5LH, Willingham Social Club, Fen End, Cambridge, CB24 5LH, United Kingdom
Tickets
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