Name
Frederick Buckett
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Pirton School Memorial
Biography
Frederick appears on the School War Memorial, confirming that he attended the school. Parish records suggest only one man of this name who could have served, and he was baptised on December 25th 1884 and was the son of George and Dinah Buckett (née Mabbet). He would have been thirty at the outbreak of war. Baptism records list eight children: Mary (bapt 1869), Henry (bapt 1872), Alice (bapt 1875), Anne (bapt 1877), Ellen (bapt 1878), Frederick (bapt 1884), Rose (b 1886) and Charles (b 1890). Frederick would have been the uncle of Albert William Buckett, who also served and survived.
In 1911, Frederick was twenty-six and earning a living as a farm labourer, but still living with his mother near the Baptist Chapel on Great Green or Bury End.
He is recorded in the Parish Magazine of September 1915 as enlisting during 1914, but after July, and serving in a Mortar Battery. It would have been late in 1914 as the Hertfordshire Express of October 17th 1914 reports a Frederick Buckett as being involved in an ‘infamous fracas’ in Pirton on October 3rd. The paper headlines this event as ‘War Against Special Constables’ *1. Frederick was summoned for assaulting Bertram Walker (a special constable, who also served in the war), was found guilty and ordered to pay two pounds or go to prison for one month. The case against him for using foul language during the same incident was dismissed. Perhaps by joining up he avoided the prison sentence?
By 1918 he was recorded as Private 191555, 2nd Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment with his home address as ‘around Great Green’.
Acknowledgments
Text from the book ‘The Pride of Pirton’ by Jonty Wild, Tony French & Chris Ryan used with author's permission
