​John Deere Battalion: 608th Ordnance Base Armament Maintenance Battalion

The relevance to Warminster of the ​John Deere Battalion: 608th Ordnance Base Armament Maintenance Battalion is that many of them were stationed in Warminster from 1943, some staying in Warminster for more than a year, repairing and maintaining machinery.. Some of these were billeted in the tall building that you see below, a former brewery, and their canteen was in the yard that you see. One of them was a talented amateur artist, Bob Wise, he was sent to France but survived the war, returning as an illustrator for John Deere in the USA. To cheer them all up Bob drew these cartoons on the walls of the canteen which in 2012 was the rough storage/waiting room for a hand car wash place and I happened to wander in, I quickly went back to my car where I had a camera, the cartoons were in poor shape. Sadly I failed in my attempts with English Heritage to get them preserved, and now in 2026 the yard is due for redevelopment, so they will be lost.

You'll see in one photograph a small horse, Seabiscuit, being pushed by a soldier. Seabiscuit was a champion thoroughbred racehorse in the United States who became the top money-winning racehorse up to the 1940s. A small horse, at 15.2 hands high, Seabiscuit became an unlikely champion and a symbol of hope to many Americans during the Great Depression. But I guess he'd just lost Bob a bet.