Pte Percival (Percy) Frank Buckingham, 3/7179, 2nd Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, died on November 4th, 1916, from wounds received on the Somme. He was aged 22.

Parents Alfred and Annie Buckingham, of 136 North Street, Luton, received news earlier that Percy was in hospital in France suffering from shell shock. His mother then received a letter from her son to say he was much better and was expecting to rejoin his unit.

But just a few days later she received a telegram stating that Percy had again been in action and that he had died of wounds received on November 4th.

Pte Buckingham joined the Army six years previously at the age of 16, being in the Special Reserve. At the outbreak of war he went out to France with the Bedfordshire Regiment and was wounded both at Mons and Ypres. After his second wounding he came home on leave and was then sent to Felixstowe as a lance-corporal over a machine gun section. But when he later returned to France he renounced his rank.

Percy had been one of the first to work in the Emblem moulding shop at George Kent's Ltd, but at the outbreak of war he was a moulder at the Diamond Foundry, Dallow Road.