Description:Laurence Cadbury was the eldest son of Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury, George Cadbury’s second wife. At the outbreak of World War One, aged twenty-five, he volunteered as a member of the Friends Ambulance Unit for which he served between 7 September 1914 and 2 March 1919. Laurence Cadbury wrote regularly to his friends and family and particularly to his parents. These letters along with documents and photographs account for his service with the FAU during the war. They form part of the Cadbury archive at University of Birmingham Special Collections.
Cadbury was one of the founding members of the Friends Ambulance Unit. The FAU was a volunteer service managed by the Joint War Committee, Red Cross and Order of St John. Attached to the French Army, it engaged in a number of military related activities throughout the duration of the war, including the provision of ambulance trains and motor convoys, hospitals, as well as some civilian responsibilities. Up until March 1916, Laurence Cadbury was an officer-in-charge of an ambulance convoy which consisted of 20 ambulances and 56 men. After this date he was relocated to the FAU head-quarters in Malo where he became the Officer-in-Charge of the Transport.
Laurence Cadbury expressed an interest in entering regular service on a number of occasions during the war. The Special Collections holds a number of documents which relate to his application for a ‘Temporary Commission in the Royal Field Artillery’. These documents included a letter to Cadbury from William Norman Birkett who persuaded him to remain with the FAU. In 1918 Cadbury received another letter, this time from Sir George Newman, which also pleaded for him to remain with the Unit. This letter is particularly interesting as Laurence Cadbury annotated the reverse of the letter with his reasons ‘for and against staying with the Unit’ – the most poignant note against staying was ‘shame of not being a combatant’.
For his services during World War One, Laurence Cadbury was awarded the Croix-de-Guerre by the French government and was also awarded the Order of British Empire (OBE) in 1919.