The sign they are all trying to read states Britain has declared war on Germany, and this young man has turned from the board and is looking directly out of the frame at me from 100 years ago.

Turning away from the collage of pictures on the walls of the Reading at War exhibition at the Town Hall museum I look with a fresh pair of eyes at the medals glinting in cases, the old fashioned muskets, badges and mementos. Before they were just objects, but now they are possessions.

It is all so easy to get lost in the facts and figures that were drilled into us all at school. But what my history teacher never managed to impress upon me was how the war affected the lives of people beyond the solders putting their lives on the line.

But walking around the museum it really hits home that the war affected more than just the soldiers, but everyone who lived and died throughout it.

Three blackened old pennies that were given to Vera Wicks by her dad Sidney as a parting gift when she was nine years old now stand in a glass case. The youngster made a promise to herself not to spend them until he returned and the coins were found among other things when she died, aged 92, at a care home in the borough.

There are also the stories of Reading’s industrial families, the Sutton-Seeds, Simmonds, Palmers and Collier—each famous for a different ‘B’ of the town, Bute, biscuits, beer and bricks —who all lost heirs to the conflict.

The mayor, Leonard Godhart Sutton, was one of the key figures in the recruitment drive of 1915 after the British Expeditionary Force was nearly wiped out. But of his five sons who went out to fight for king and country, Noel, Eric, William, Alexander and Eustace, only the eldest Noel returned to his father’s side.

Former England rugby star Ronald Patton Palmer’s picture hangs on the wall. The scorer of four tries in England’s victory over the French in their grandslam winning team of 1914 joined the Royal Berkshire Regiment in 1915, but was killed by a sniper a month after setting sail for the continent.

Samuel Robert ‘Bob’ Collier, the son of brick-making magnet S. George Collier, went into battle with the Berkshire Yeomanry at the Somme in 1916 and was never seen again.

Reading Museum will house these and many other stories of courage and cowardice, grief and gratitude, sorrow and salvation, until the exhibition ends on September 14.

But while it can never tell us of the depths of fear, horror and despair the soldiers faced in the trenches, it does give us an insight of what the people of Reading lived through during the four years of war. The museum is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 4pm and Sundays 11am to 4pm. Admission is free.

JOE GAMMIE