22nd JANUARY 1922
“A MORE FITTING DAY COULD NOT HAVE BEEN CHOSEN ON WHICH TO LAY THE FOUNDATION STONES OF THE CARILLON TOWER”
The date was 22nd January, 1922. The building of the long awaited, long debated Carillon Tower, Loughborough’s unique war memorial, was underway.
It was a Sunday, a day chosen because, as the Loughborough Echo stated: “it was considered that the ceremony might lose its solemnity on a Saturday during a football match.”
On this fine wintry afternoon, local dignitaries including the Lord Mayor Cllr Arthur Armstrong and General Lord Horne KCB, a former commander of the 1st Army on the Western Front, gathered at the site of the tower in Queens Park for the laying of the foundation stones. All religious denominations were represented, while the 5th Leicesters provided the guard of honour and band music. There was a detachment from the Yeomanry and 86 ex-servicemen. Lord Horne gave a long speech in which he praised the service and sacrifices of the men of Loughborough, giving special mention to the 5th Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment, and C Squadron of the County Yeomanry.
Also present was a woman wrapped up warmly in her hat and coat; Mrs Henrietta Godber. She was there to play a poignant role in the proceedings.
Henrietta Godber had been chosen by ballot to represent the families of the Loughborough men who had died in the war. Her son, John William (“Billy”) Godber, had been killed in action in France on 16th April 1917.
Mrs Godber used a stonemason’s wooden mallet to tap down one of the foundation stones as it was lowered into place. The Carillon Museum still has the mallet in the collection in its care. The event had attracted a great deal of public interest. A newspaper report described large crowds gathering in Market Place, Wards End and Bradford Square, and in Queen’s Park. And as the article also noted, “a more fitting day could not have been chosen on which to lay the foundation stones of the Carillon Tower”. For the sad irony was that the date of the ceremony, 22nd January, would have been Private Godber’s 26th birthday.
Billy Godber was one of eight children and was born in East Leake, Nottinghamshire, in 1896. The family later moved to Loughborough and in 1911, 15-year-old Billy was working as a grocer’s assistant at the Maypole Dairy. We don’t know when Billy enlisted in the Army, but he may not even have been 20. According to one of his sisters, the family was extremely upset when he did so. But he joined 2/5th (Territorial) Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment as Private 4881. The Battalion was mobilised in September 1914. Billy Godber’s service papers have been lost but we do know he was serving in France in the spring of 1917. Writing to his fiancée, Maud Stubley, on 8th April 1917, Billy thanked her for the parcel she had sent him containing a copy of the Loughborough Echo, some bread, butter, eggs and socks. He wrote: ‘I am looking forward to coming back soon, I’ve had quite enough‘.
This was not to be. On 16th April, the Battalion was caught in a heavy barrage at Brosse Woods. Billy, serving as a stretcher bearer, was killed by a sniper’s bullet as he carried an injured comrade to safety. He was 21.
We can imagine what his mother’s thoughts might have been as she stood with the VIPs that day in Queen’s Park. Pride no doubt, but grief too, that her fine young boy, her firstborn, who should have been celebrating his birthday that day, was lost.
His fiancée Maud must have been amongst the crowd. But by this time, she had found a new love in Reginald Skillern, and had married him in 1921. They had two children.
Henrietta Godber and her husband John had no option but to carry on, raising the rest of their family. In 1939 the couple were living at 98 Wharncliffe Road with their youngest son Harold, who had been born in February 1917 and would not have remembered his big brother Billy.
However, his sister Hilda Onions did. In 2011, aged 100, she took part in a ceremony at the Carillon to remember the war dead, and laid flowers in memory of Billy. As reported in the Loughborough Echo she said: “I was four when the war broke out and seven when William was killed but I still remember him vividly. He always made a fuss of me because I was the youngest at the time, my younger brother hadn’t yet been born. He was the eldest in the family and we missed him so much.”
Mrs Godber taps the stone into place watched by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress
Billy Godber was just 21 when he was killed in France
