West Ham Pals

'West Ham Pals' were east London volunteers who went to fight for their country in First World War
They had no uniforms. They had no rifles when they first started training together. But they each shared in a collective determination to answer the call to defend this country against aggression.

Men from a wide diversity of backgrounds, they would get to know each other very well over the coming months and years, eventually sharing in the horrors of industrialised warfare which sent more than half of them home with life changing injuries but which also killed more than a quarter of the original thousand volunteers.
They came from across east London and were the first generation of West Ham United supporters – in fact the Battalion played several fund-raising and recruitment matches at the Boleyn against the Green Street Shopkeepers and the Band of the Thames Ironworks provided music for most of their important parades.

A few of the volunteers were very young men, 15 and 16 year olds, but  there were also a great many older men in the West Ham Battalion. The oldest was a 48 year old Private. And being older, of course meant they were fathers. One soldier in the Battalion had a family of 20 children by the time he went to France. Perhaps he thought it might be quieter on the Western Front than at home.

This is a Poppy Commemorative badge I received in the post today.