Object May 2009

The Bugle Platoon

One hundred years ago, the bugle was an essential part of military communications, at least in a Light Infantry regiment.  Before radios, bugles could be heard over a long distance. And back in barracks, bugles were just as useful, serving the purpose of loudspeaker systems, or perhaps email, in later years. Over 150 different short tunes were used to pass orders.

This month’s Soldiers of Oxfordshire “Object of the Month” is a photograph of The Bugles of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.   Enthusiast and research volunteer Kevin Tobin came across the picture in a sale and snapped it up.  It was probably taken between 1909 and 1911.

The photograph’s special value is that everyone is named.  One visitor to Soldiers of Oxfordshire saw the photograph and immediately said, “Oh, there’s my grandfather!” Some of the other names are intriguing. For instance, there are several buglers with the rank “Boy” including two brothers, both described simply as “Boy Evetts”.  The Army at that time recruited boys from the age of 14 onwards providing them, no doubt, with security, pay, training and a career and family sense that might otherwise have been lacking.

Several of those named did not make it through the war, including one of the Evetts brothers.

Visitors can look for their grandfather and see  more, including a bugle – not British, but Belgian, picked up by a local person’s grandfather on a World War I battlefield -  during May in the object of the month case at The Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock.