Page 1101 - Reading Mercury

There remains some delay in the provision of water and electricity to the site and the
council’s recess committee were authorised to keep up contact with the Thames
Valley Water Authority and Southern Electricity during the summer break.
The question of the refreshment kiosk proposed for the park was deferred until next
year. The council felt that to go ahead with building now would only mean that the
facility would stand unused.

Thur 22nd Aug
TOWN CRIER CHICK BIDDLE RECALLS LIFETIME IN UNIFORM
India
Within one year of leaving school Chick had received his basic training in the
regimental band and was packed off to India. He spent five years there and with the
band he saw the upper crust of the British Raj. The band were never given front line
duties but Chick remembers stretcher bearing during the religious riots which used to
flare up each year.
Sudan
In 1930 Chick was on the move again as the Regiment embarked for Khartoum in
the Sudan. He spent a year there and hated every second. At times the temperature
climbed to 121f in the shade. At one point the band had to go with the regiment on its
exercises which included a 15-mile forced march across the desert, a trek which
nearly did for Chick. There was sand everywhere which penetrated the instruments.
When a wind storm rose the sand would blast through the wooden shutters on the
barrack windows.
Once saw a plague of locusts which came as a thick cloud like an Indian monsoon.
All told Chick was glad to get back to Blighty in 1931, when he led the Regimental
mascot, a black buck antelope from India called Bob, back to Woking. It was there he
met Lucy, his wife to be.
Married
Chick left the band in 1933 and was promoted to lance corporal and the job of clerk
in the orderly room. In 1935 he married Lucy and by 1938 Chick was back in his
home town of Warwick where they set up home in married quarters.
This was an unfortunate time to start a family. Six weeks before the outbreak of war
in September 1939 their only child, Maureen was born. There then followed a lengthy
separation as the family returned to Lucy's mother in Woking and Chick was posted to
Lanark, Scotland, as an infantry instructor.
He helped train up the raw materials for the war machine. The fresh faced young
men who would see action across the world. After the war Chick became Colour
Sergeant Biddle and was posted to occupied Germany. As a platoon commander in
Lubeck in 1948 he helped on the great Berlin Airlift. He finally left the Regiment
after forty-one years’ service in 1965. But within a year Chick was back in uniform as
the mace bearer and town crier for Wokingham.
He gave up the function of mace bearer in 1981 as there were too many social
engagements but Chick continues as town crier and is known throughout Wokingham.

th
Thur 5 Sept
WORK STARTS ON THEATRE
It was all smiles on the faces of members and friends of the Wokingham Theatre
recently, at a turf-turning ceremony to mark the beginning of the construction of their
long-awaited new building. At the ceremony the chairman of the Wokingham District

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