
The Oxfordshire military connection to a Suffolk tragedy, 1914

Photgraphic postcard remembering the victims of the Sea Scout Tragedy, including Stanley Wood
The Carlton Colville Sea Scouts troop were returning from a week’s camping on the Duke’s Head hills and were rowing back to Oulton Broad when their boat capsized.
They were scoutmaster Thornton Lory, a Lowestoft solicitor, James Lewington, 34, an ex-naval instructor, assistant scoutmaster Sydney Scarle, 18, and scouts Reginald Middleton, 14, Arthur Beare, 14, and Sydney Thrower, 16. Another Sea Scout, 17-year-old Stanley Wood, was the only survivor.
But what does all this have to do with Oxfordshire military history?

List of Bucks Battalion casualties at Fromelles, July 1916.
As a regular visitor to Lowestoft and reader of the Lowestoft Journal, I recognised his name when reading both this article and a previous report when the postcard sale had been proposed.
He was perhaps fortunate to survive one tragedy, only to lose his life just 2 years later, aged 19.
Tags: Buckinghamshire, Buckinghamshire Battalion, Bucks Battalion, First World War, Fromelles, FWW, Great War, Lowestoft, Ox & Bucks, Oxf. & Bucks, Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Suffolk, Western Front, World War One, WW1, WWI
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