Cambridge District Scout Archive
The roles played by Scouts and Scouters in WW1 were not collected at the time. Outside the work on Gallantry medals (see District/ Early Supporters/ Medals) and the District Work camps, Scouting involvement in WW1 has not yet been brought together in this work.
The WW2 Evercircular pages highlight that the armed forces required people to do everything from Traffic Police to Pay Corps. The following story has been unpicked by a branch of the Davies family.
Kenneth Cuthbert Johnson Davies, SM of the 3rd Cambridge, when it was St Catherine’s College in 1913, was a Barrister in Canada and in the Sudanese Political Service. He became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. During WW1 he was initially part of the Royal Army Service Corp and a member of the Concert Party the Light Blues. He is seen here below in female attire.
The concert party worked as close to the front line as possible and were named as the ‘Firing Line’ concert party. The Concert Party were ‘all killed’ by an aeroplane bomb whilst asleep in a tent. (Sept 1917) As an officer he may have slept elsewhere; the death by a bomb from an aircraft and the fact that they were in a tent suggests that they were out of shelling range and probably not needing to hunker together in limited safe space.
K C J Davies transferred to the Indian Army and the Gurkha’s and ended as Major. He returned to military service in WW2 as Colonel in the RAOC.
JWR Archivist Jan 2020