Power and Sword, publisher of military history volumes, has published Crewe in the Great War written by Peter Ollerhead.

Peter’s eighth book on the history of Crewe covers the years 1914 to 1919 showing the progress of the war and how it affected the inhabitants of Crewe.

It is part of a nationwide series which will eventually cover most of the towns in England so when the author was invited by the publishers to participate in the project he counted it an honour.

Among the themes covered in Crewe and the Great War is the frenzied response to the declaration of war along with the slow realisation that it was not going to be over by Christmas. The first days of the conflict saw a rapid rise in the cost of food, a rise that began a constant agitation on the part of organised labour that was not really solved until a few months before the Armistice when a food rationing scheme was introduced.

Anti-German riots were witnessed in the first months in Victoria Street and Mill Street, riots that cost the ratepayers a considerable sum in compensation to shopkeepers whose premises were vandalised.

A local councillor was taunted and insulted simply because his father had emigrated from Prussia in the later years of Victoria’s reign. He was denigrated by having ‘Sacred to the memory’ engraved on his father’s grave marker. Such was the hysteria engendered by the many local deaths on the Western Front and other battlefields.

From extracts of local soldiers’ letters it can be gauged how the men at the Front felt; rumours and reports of Zeppelin attacks from autobiographies of Crewe people alive at the time illustrate how local people dealt with the threat of air-raids. Always present is the cost of the war in human terms with the deaths of Crewe men in the many battles and trench warfare in France, Mesopotamia, East Africa and Palestine in addition to the navy and air casualties. The relief and joyous celebrations when the war was over are tempered with the continuing sadness of the long casualty list which caused some mothers and widows to turn to spiritualism and séances for comfort.

Peter Ollerhead, is a long-time resident of town, working for 14 years at Rolls-Royce as detail draughtsman before enrolling at Keele University where he was awarded an honours degree in education then a masters degree in history. For many years he was director of programmes with South Cheshire Hospital Broadcast Service, proprietor of Copnal Books in Meredith Street and secretary of Crewe Historical Society.

He is also a member of the Christian assembly that meets in Heathfield Gospel Hall.

Crewe in the Great War can be bought at most Crewe bookshops priced £9.99.