Maurice was born in the village of Hullavington which is situated roughly half way between the town of Chippenham and the ancient borough of Malmesbury in North Wiltshire.
Maurice was the second son of John and Ada Wicks whose offspring numbered eight. The youngest, baby Norah, dying in her mothers arms at the age of nine months.
Father John, a strict baptist, was a hurdle maker together with brother Aaron, carrying on from countless generations of Wicks - hurdle makers. The family lived in a tiny two up, two down cottage in Hill Hayes Lane which still stands today.
The cottage is surrounded by meadow streams and ancient battle sites. Windmill Hill, not far from the Wicks' cottage leads on to an area known as Happy Lands where Maurice had an idylic childhood spending hours in pursuit of rabbits chased out of their burrows by ferrets and netted at the exit/entrance to the burrows.
Maurice was also a crack shot with his home-made catapult from which many a rabbit or pigeon came to the families dinner table in the form of delicious pies prepared by his much loved mother, Ada.
He writes of being pushed through the small entrance to a neighbours fowl house to poach hens eggs and quotes from the good book, - "Thou Shalt Not Steal - But We Had To Live".
The egg poaching ceased one day with the owners earlier than usual return from work. "So this ended the egg business", writes Maurice. He was three or four years old at the time.
Maurice's memoirs, written in long hand in old school books gives account of the hardships and poverty suffered by the majority of village folk in those times. In teenage years employment was very difficult to find with weekly queue's at the Malmesbury Labour Exchange proving "fruitless".
At the age of seventeen in desperation Maurice signed up to join the army by falsifying his true age. His accounts of his army days made often amusing reading, but he writes, "My army number had barely time to dry" before he was out in civvy street again, buying himself out for the sum of twenty one pounds. A huge sum in the 30's.
The reason for this appeared in the form of Hettie, a Malmesbury girl he had met while on weekend leave from the army. "A wolf whistle and a flash of scarlet dress" dissapearing up an alleyway became the start of a love affair which lasted his life-time and produced six offspring, two sons and four daughters.
During the years of the depression in the 30's Maurice found employment as a labourer building the Aerodrome in Hullavington (now an army barracks). On Completion of the Aerodrome he was offered employment as a Constabulary Policeman which lasted until the 1960's when he was medically retired from the force after sustaining leg injuries in an accident.
The majority of his memoirs were written while recovering from his injuries. Maurice died aged 52 in 1967.
Maureen Lovett (second daughter of Maurice and Hette Wicks).
