In A Guide to the Volunteer Training Corps, Ray Westlake has provided for the first time records of many of these fascinating early home defence volunteer units; his main source of information being contemporary records. A short history of the Volunteer Training Corps has also been provided, together with a comprehensive listing of all Volunteer Regiments, Volunteer Battalions, Artillery, Engineer, Army Service Corps, Royal Army Medical Corps and Motor formations. This will be an essential reference book for all those researching the men who, being too old or too young to fight, voluntarily set aside their private time during the First World War for their King and Country.

A regular question put to Ray Westlake during his fifty or more years writing and researching Britain’s auxiliary forces has been, ‘Where can I find a list giving details of the several Volunteer Training Corps units raised during the early months of the Great War?’ True, the post-1915 years that saw the smaller companies merged into battalions, and later regiments, has been adequately covered in the several Volunteer Lists available. But what about the ‘Citizens’ corps, or the ‘Fencibles’, the ‘Defence’ organisations, the ‘Village Guards’; those raised by shooting, cricket, golf or football clubs, or by railway companies, factories or athletes, businessmen or old school fellows? The answer, until now, has regrettably been there is none.