GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill Station: gwrbsh1790

Arthur Cherry was twenty-one when he joined the Great Western Railway in January 1912. He enlisted on 8th August 1914 just four days after war had been declared. During that August, 4,048 of the Great Western Railway's staff had joined up. This number includes volunteers, territorial Army and reservists. By the end of October 1914 the number reached 8,466. Anticipating a short war, Frank Potter, the General Manager promised to guarantee posts for enlisted men who returned. In addition the company paid pension contributions and supplemented the men's service pay. By the end of 1914 the railway found their workforce was significantly depleted with almost 13% of their 78,084 staff enlisted and costs where also increasing due to overtime payments. As a result new staff including women, were recruited on temporary contracts and retired employees requested to return. Of the 11,987 new staff recruited during the war, to replace the 25,463 staff who had joined the forces, 5,026 were women employees. Prior to the war the company had 1,371 women employees.

At the end of the war 1,902 Great Western Railway employees had been killed in action and in November 1918 a further 2,304 identified as unavailable due to being wounded, sick or prisoners of war and some of these never returned. Almost immediately the war ended a world wide influenza epidemic caused further deaths, but numbers are unknown. The company kept its promise to re-employ enlisted men and as can be seen from this memo even tried to find alternative suitable work for men who were physically unable to return to their previous duties. For more information on how the first world war impacted on the Great Western Railway in Warwickshire see The First World War and After.

Robert Ferris

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