One of the East Riding of Yorkshire’s most famous monuments is located in the village of Sledmere on the B1253 road between Fridaythorpe and Bridlington.  The story behind this amazing piece of roadside furniture is one of danger, dedication, hard work, loyalty and honour to the men who volunteered into the Wolds Waggoners(sic) Special Reserve.  From the North Sea to the Humber, all along the ridged uplands of the Yorkshire Wolds they came, from villages and farms, bringing with them a special skill, which was to prove invaluable in the dark days to come.  Place names such as Fimber, Flixton and Eddlethorpe; Butterwick, Langtoft and Towthorpe offered their young men and their special talents to the British army in it’s own time of dire need.  Some Waggoners, as with all their comrades-in-arms paid the ultimate sacrifice, leaving many of their number in foreign war graves, or just as names on war memorials.

The Wolds Waggoners, as they are more commonly called were the idea of Sir Mark Sykes Bart., of Sledmere who in 1913, or before recognised the special skills of the farmers, men, and lads, who drove the local form of farm wagon.  A four-wheeled vehicle very similar in design to those employed by the British army prior to World War 1, pulled by a pair of horses, or more locally ‘osses’, what made them special was their ability to drive either from a seat or as postilion.  Each wagon measured 12 feet by 6, and was rigged with a central pole to divide the horses.  Rugged and hardy, they had smaller wheels at the front than other county wagons, and therefore a tighter turning circle.  The farmers and their lads took an immense amount of pride both in their vehicles and in the animals used to haul them. 

Portrait photograph of Sir Mark Sykes dated 1916. Courtesy of PASSIA (Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs) . Sir Mark Sykes portrait at: http://www.passia.org/ to whom go my sincere thanks for this image, permission has been asked to allow its reproduction herein, but as yet, no reply has been forthcoming.

Sir Mark Sykes had realised that the talents possessed by those men were special, and that to train someone up from scratch to perform the same duty to the same exacting standard would take a minimum of 6 months, six months that the British army could ill afford in his opinion.  The need to get men and equipment up to the front line quickly was of paramount importance, and it was for this task that the Wolds lads were eminently suited.  An establishment of 1.200 drivers was foreseen including 56 Foremen and 12 Roadmasters, and by January 1913, 200 men below the age of 45 had volunteered.  This was increased to 400 by the following July.  Recruitment drives, together with annual driving competitions swelled their number so that by August 1914, 1,127 men were on the roll of the Waggoners.

The appointed Roadmasters included:

William Megginson, Frederick Sykes, Frank Hodsman all of Eddlethorpe;
Dewsbury Megginson of Fimber;
Claude Megginson of Towthorpe;
Frank Dee of Woodhall Farm, Sledmere;Ernest Byass of Butterwick;
Charles Pinkney of Malton;
Robert Byass of Centre House Farm, North Dalton;
William Beswick of Langtoft;
John Holdridge and Arthur Smith of Warter; and
Richard Beswick of Flixton.
Frederick Sykes, Claude Megginson, and John Holdridge all earned promotion and commissions as lieutenants in the Army Service Corps, with Megginson achieving the eventual rank of Captain.

Included also were the drivers, they, as had been stated came mainly from the Wolds of East Yorkshire, here is a sample:

However, recruitment into the Waggoners was not exclusive to the Wolds, men enlisted from the Vale of York to as far away as Norfolk.  No doubt the high wages paid on East Yorkshire farms was a contributory factor for the diversity, but the end result was the same, there was a hard core of well trained professional Waggoners ready and able to be employed by the British army should the need arise.  Needless to say, that need arose with the outbreak of the First World War on the 5^th August 1914, just as the harvest was being brought in.  In the fields of Yorkshire, it was one of the busiest times in the farmer’s and wagoner’s calendars.  Postmen and messengers brought call-up papers with in some cases, undue haste.  As the men began to gather, they were sent to the Army Service Corps (A.S.C.) depot at Moor Barracks, Bradford, which was never intended to cope with such an influx of men, and many were forced to bunk down in schoolrooms.  While the issue of uniforms was necessary, the need for basic military training, such as drill, were not seen to be as necessary as was sending the Waggoners to their intended units without delay. 

The majority of the initial draft was sent to various units of the Corps of Horse Transport, A.S.C., which included

9 Coy., forming the 1^st Reserve Park at Aldershot
30 Coy., forming the 2^nd Reserve Park at Devonport
34 Coy., forming the 3^rd Reserve Park at Devonport
20 Coy., forming the 4^th Reserve Park at Aldershot
12 Coy., forming the 5^th Reserve Park at Portsmouth
5 Coy., forming the 6^th Reserve Park at Portsmouth;

but 200 were instead posted to the 1^st and 2^nd Bridging Trains, part of the Royal Engineers in Ireland.  The purpose of the Bridging Trains was to keep a reserve of pontoons and associated equipment necessary to construct a bridge 200 yards long.  Upon their arrival in France, the two Bridging Trains were renamed Pontoon Parks, which title was retained until the end of the war.  Here it has to be reiterated that the ‘Wolds Waggoners’ was not, and never was intended to be a military unit of its self, on the contrary, the men of the Waggoners fed into established military units which included 9^th, 30^th, 34^th, 20^th, 12^th, and 5^th Reserve Parks of the A.S.C., which were later renamed respectively as 1^st – 6^th Reserve Parks.  Indeed, the men of the Wolds Waggoners were not even soldiers; they were civilians who had a desperately needed skill, a skill, which they offered to their country unreservedly.  It was the responsibility of the Reserve Parks to hold and maintain sufficient supplies to keep an infantry division in rations for two days.  To achieve this, each Reserve Park was equipped with 59 General Service wagons (G.S.), 2 forage carts, 1 light Maltese cart, and a water cart.  To pull this ensemble, there were allotted to each Park, 358 draught and riding horses.  Such horses were requisitioned from all parts of southern England, the most of which were ‘shires’ or ‘Clydesdales’, which were more familiar with hauling brewers’ drays.  After little more than a fortnight, the Waggoners found themselves and their allotted Parks being transported across the English Channel to the shores of France, the furthest most of them were ever likely to travel. Most came ashore at either Rouen or Le Havre, from whence the wagons were dispatched to various dumps and depots to load up with the supplies necessary to maintain their respective divisions.  Once loaded, the carts, horses, and men were loaded onto trains for transhipment to the front.  They would never arrive.  The B.E.F. had suffered a humiliating strategic defeat at the battle of Mons, which forced the retirement of the entire army.  The Reserve Parks were detrained, and had to withdraw as best they could in the mêlée that was developing.  However, the B.E.F. were eventually able to set up defensive positions along the river Marne.  The German advance was halted, and they in their turn forced to retreat.  Eventually the Western Front became a war of trenches, a static war, a war of attrition. 

By that time the Reserve Parks had almost settled into a routine, exemplified;

That on the face of things and considering the circumstances, does not seem to have been too harsh an existence, but the first fatal casualty to ensue from the ranks of the Waggoners was that of Johnson Leighton, a Beverley man who had sighed on at Bainton, was killed in the Ypres Salient whilst serving with the 7^th Division.  Wagoner Leighton was badly wounded near Gheluvelt, and subsequently died of his wounds in hospital at Bailleul on the 9^th November.  He is buried in the Cummunal Cemetery there.

1915 saw some changes.  Several of the older Waggoners were allowed to go home after they had completed one year’s service, which was part of their original contract.  Others however decided to remain, 7 men from the 2^nd Reserve Park in particular chose to remain for the ‘Duration’.  Others were transferred to other Parks and Depots, both at various theatres of war, and also to the Home Front for a lucky few.  It was in this period that Roadmaster Claude Megginson of Towthorpe, who had risen in the ranks to become Company Sergeant Major of the 1^st Pontoon Park, decided to go for a commission.  After a stint in the U.K. he was successful, and served with the Army Service Corps as a Lieutenant in various units that included 1^st Park and 12^th Divisional Train, before finally being demobbed as a captain, in January 1919.  On the 28^th August 1915, Wagoner 803 Andrew Smith of 3^rd Park, who originally hailed from Northumberland but who enlisted at Slingsby, was accidentally drowned whilst bathing in the River Aa, near the village of Esquerdes, just south-west of St. Omer.

2^nd Park in 1917, was attached to the Canadian Corps, and for many nights in January and February they were employed hauling engineers’ stores forward to bolster up the line in front of Vimy Ridge.  Conditions were nothing short of dire, both horses and men dropped from sheer exhaustion and fatigue.  They were not out of range of German artillery either, and several Waggoners received wounds at this time. 

Two such were 227 Tom Bulmer of Arram and 1123 William Dowson of Langtoft, both with the 2nd Park, and while engaged in transport work for the Australian troops, were coincidentally both wounded on the same day by shell fire.  Tom Bulmer was awarded the Military Medal on the 1st September 1917 for gallantry in the field, his commanding officer Major H. McDougall No.2 Reserve Park wrote to Tom’s mother “Mrs. Bulmer      14 . 10 . 17 Long Riston, near Hull Dear Madam, I am happy to be able to tell you that your son has this day been awarded the Military Medal for his very gallant conduct in action on the 1st of this month, when he was wounded.  I hope you have good news from him in hospital, and that he is recovering.”

	Wagoner 1086 Richard Davison, who on the 11th August 1918 saved the lives of four of his comrades, won another Military Medal.  The medal was awarded to him on the 22nd of the same month and General Rawlinson, then commander of the British 4th Army, signed the citation.

By 1917, such were the losses incurred by the infantry that they had begun to ‘pressgang’ drivers from the Reserve Parks to swell their own ranks.  In spite of protests made by Sir Mark Sykes and others, by September drafts of up to 50 drivers were being transferred to infantry battalions.  This was however the time during which the internal combustion engine was superseding natural horsepower, and drivers of the more modern lorries and other vehicles were more in demand.  The only problem with those however was their propensity to get bogged down in the heavy, claggy mud of Flanders whereas horses and their carts were pretty well self-extricating in similar circumstances. The losses to the Parks were badly felt, often the fittest and most able drivers were taken, to be replaced by inferior specimens, both in aptitude to drive wagons, and in physical ability.  Indeed, it is reported that on one occasion, after 140 Category B men (as they were designated) arrived, 56 of them had to be immediately hospitalised. 

Another such case was the arrival of 50 Category B men, of which only 21 had any previous experience with horses.  The men of the Pontoon Parks similarly were redeployed, their original function of providing mobile bridging units having been made redundant by the static nature of the Western Front.  They were often transferred to other Royal Engineer units, and both Pontoon Parks subsequently spent much of the war near the Ypres salient, the 1^st at Molinghem, and the 2^nd at Steenwerck and Vlamertinghe. 

By the end of the war in November 1918, the men of the Wolds Waggoners Special Reverve, in which ever unit they then found themselves, had served with distinction, many, if not most of them having served from the earliest days of the British mobilisation in 1914.  They had served in many theatres from France and Belgium, Italy, and Salonika to the Middle East. 

Some had been decorated for their actions and gallantry:

While the above might not seem a very impressive a record at first glance, it has to be remembered that these men were not soldiers, they were for the most part civilians, they were not fighting on the Front Line like some of the more illustrious infantry regiments, theirs was a task in the main of keeping such regiments in the field, as well stocked with rations and ammunition as was available, and to bring back the dead and wounded of such regiments to either recover, or to be buried with dignity.  It has been attributed to one of the worlds most famous generals, Napoleon Bonaparte, that ‘an army marches on its stomach’ so, without the means to supply all those hundreds of thousands of stomachs, the British army could not have held their positions, and fought for as long as was required to achieve the final victory.  The Wolds Waggoners did their bit, they had reason to be proud, and such pride was commemorated in September 1920, when Lieutenant General Sir Ivor Maxse, K.C.B. commander of the Army’s Northern District, unveiled the memorial to those men. 

The monument stands today, conceived by Sir Mark Sykes, built by Mr. A. Barr, the Sykes’ estate mason, with carved panels by Carlo Magnoni, in a prominent position by the roadside in Sledmere village.

The following is a list of those Wagoner’s who are known to have been killed in action or died of their wounds, no such list can I fear ever be said to be complete, but this, it is hoped, is as complete as records can provide.

On the memorial to the Waggoners are carved the words of a poem dedicated to them, which reads:

The steans a noble tale do tell
Of what men did when war befell,
And in the fourteenth harvest-tide
The call for lads went far and wide
To help to save the world fra wrong,
To shield the weak and bind the strong.

And fra these wolds twelve hundred men
Came forth fra field and fold and pen
To stand against the law of might,
To labour, and dee for right,
And for to save the world fra wrong,
To shield the weak and bind the strong.

Good lads and game, out Riding’s Pride,
These steans are set by this roadside
This tale your children’s bairns to tell
Of what ye did when war befell.
To help to save the world fra wrong,
To shield the weak and bind the strong.

Photo courtesy of Simon Dove, taken at the time of the Garton and Kirkburn chariot burials excavation, for which see navigation bar for Yorkshire Chariot Burials, alongside.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun,
And in the morning,
We will remember them.

The PDF file which can be accessed here is a list of 1,127 men of the Wolds Waggoners and their details, compiled by Colin Appleby, and given freely to this site, for which every one should be grateful. It means that the memory of all these men can now be preserved and viewed by any and all with an interest. Thank you Colin!

My sincere thanks have to go to Ian Sumner “The Wolds Waggoners” published by the Sledmere Estate, © Sledmere Estate 2000; and to Graham Boddy and Roy Wilson “Museum of Army Transport Special Promotions Book 1”, published b