The Media Archive for Central England is the public screen archive for the East and West Midlands. An independent charity and company based at the University of Lincoln, MACE acquires, catalogues, preserves and makes widely available moving image materials that inform our understanding of the diverse cultures and histories of communities between the Lincolnshire coast and the Welsh border.
This film is part of Free
Austin: Officer Training Corps at Wrekin College
Preparing the next generation of officers on the playing fields of a Shropshire public school.
From the collection of:
Overview
The boys of the Wrekin College Officer Training Corps at Wellington in Shropshire are put through their paces with displays of marching and manoeuvres. The boys would have had no first-hand experience of the conflict that blighted their parents' generation but we can be sure that the officers and teachers were well aware of the destructive power of the machine gun that the boys are given to try out.
The OTC at Wrekin College was set up by the school's founder, Sir John Bayley, in 1909 when the school was known as Wellington College. In the college chapel there is a memorial dedicated to the fallen of the First World War, which contains the names of more than fifty Old Wrekinians who died in the conflict.