Images from the First World War

Tom Eayrs was the son of a St Neots farmer and butcher, with a butchers shop on the Market Square. Born in 1897, he enlisted just after his eighteenth birthday in 1915 and by October he was fighting on the Western Front at Cloth Hall, Ypres. He continued fighting on the Western Front for the rest of the war, being injured on at least one occasion, until in October 1918, only weeks before the end of the war, he received a serious ‘blighty wound’. This was an injury serious enough to need nursing in England, nicknamed ‘Blighty’ by soldiers a mix of Britain / England. Tom Eayrs survived the Great War and lived in the St Neots area for the rest of his life.

St Neots soldier, Tom Eayrs after he became an officer, 1917

Eayrs butcher shop on St Neots Market Square, about 1914

Eayrs Butcher’s shop, St Neots Market Square

Tom Eayrs in hospital in Oxford, 1919

Tom Eayrs convalescing in Brighton, 1919

The ruins of Ypres, from a small souvenir album sent home by Tom Eayrs

By the summer of 1917 the British had learnt valuable lessons from the disastrous Somme campaign, and were much better prepared:

Troops had more shells and ammunition to destroy enemy positions
Shells were fired ahead of advancing troops to protect them from enemy fire
The target area was smaller and needed fewer troops to capture it
Soldiers crawled out at night to cut the German barbed wire barrier

On the first day of the3rd Battle Ypres, 7^th June 1917, the British exploded 19 huge mines under the German lines along the Messines Ridge, 10,000 German soldiers died instantly and many more were badly wounded. The explosions could be heard in London.

Gunner Hemmings of Eaton Socon saw the mines exploded and fought in the battle that followed. Private Roberts of Little Paxton wrote to explain how conditions on the battlefield had deteriorated when heavy rain fell and Harry Gilbert of Abbotsley said there was nothing to hear but ‘the din of the guns, enough to send you off your head’.