Oxfordshire Yeomanry Gunners 1922-1967

The Oxfordshire Yeomanry has had a long and glamorous history of which the county is justifiably proud, but no period of that history has been as varied and demanding as the years of 1922-1967, when the yeomen served as gunners.

As the Second World War loomed, horses gave way to tractors, saddlers to signallers, and rifles to howitzers and anti-tank guns. Yet for the OY gunners, there was always humour. There was glamour too, from their earliest years, as they trained like their cavalry forebears on the landed estates of the country and under the command of Winston Churchill, right on to their latest service, as they marched before his coffin at his funeral.

The author of this book, David Bloomfield, was one of the many attracted to the OY as National Servicemen in the 1950s, and stayed on until the regiment was disbanded. He is indebted to those who served alongside him for many of the pictures and much of the text. Even more key material came from the OY archive at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock.