Wiltshire and the Great War

Two books about Wiltshire and the Great War were published in 2012.  The Author of both is T S Crawford. Brief details are given below, and you can discover more by Googling the titles.  There are a number of suppliers on the Internet with prices ranging from about £13 to £16.

Wiltshire and the Great War (Crowood Press) tells how a million soldiers trained in the county in 1914-18, at first in tents in a very wet winter, then in hastily-erected huts. Canadians arrived in October 1914 to join new British battalions, and later Salisbury Plain became the major British base for Australian and New Zealand troops.  The book covers Military training, spy scares, prostitution, poets, escaped German prisoners and transport developments, notably aviation, are all covered, as are the effects on agriculture and local businesses.

In The Canadian Army on Salisbury Plain (Halsgrove Publishing), Terence describes four months in 1914-15 when 32,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders, rapidly recruited and poorly equipped, trained in Wiltshire. At first their discipline was very casual and their training much interrupted by poor weather, floods, sickness and having to help to build their own huts. But after much re-organising and re-equipping they left Wiltshire in February 1915 and quickly established a fine reputation on the battlefield. Many said that conditions in the trenches were not so bad as those they had experienced in Wiltshire.