by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
ONE hundred years ago, the telegram boys in the North-East were beginning one of their busiest periods of the First World War, delivering dreadful news to the families of young men out fighting in Flanders fields. The slaughter that was the Battle of Passchendaele...
by Chris Lloyd | Barnard Castle, Crook, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
WARTIME graffiti buried deep beneath a French battlefield has been unearthed 100 years after it was written by North-East soldiers. Pen and pencil messages scrawled on tunnel walls by Durham Light Infantry soldiers during the First World War has been discovered by...
by Chris Lloyd | Bishop Auckland, Centenary, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
ON the day the nation remembers our brave fallen, it has emerged two North-East towns suffered greater losses than most. Almost eight per cent of Durham City’s population was killed fighting abroad in the First World War – the highest figure in the UK,...
by Chris Lloyd | Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, Centenary, Chester-le-Street, Darlington, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
MORE than 50 memorials commemorating fallen soldiers across the region have been listed to mark the centenary of the First World War. As the country falls silent today (November 11) to honour Armistice Day and reflect on those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, war...
by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
THOUGH the year of Durham Remembers events is coming to an end, the opportunities to discover the story of the Durham Light Infantry and the county’s brave servicemen is far from over. The DLI Collection, with its 15,000 items and artefacts – the majority of which...
by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
THIS month sees the end of this year’s series of events and activities across the country marking the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. Here in Durham, the county council sought to ensure that the sacrifice of those brave men who fought for our freedom would never...
by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
A SOLDIER’S prayer book, which saved his life when he was bayoneted in the chest, has been donated to a North-East military collection. First World War Durham Light Infantryman Tommy Crawford was just a teenager when he charged into a German trench, only to see his...
by Chris Lloyd | Durham, In Your Town, Latest
I HAVE travelled from the Somme to the Wear this week looking at riverbank benches. They have been installed, partly through the generosity of readers of The Northern Echo, to commemorate the sacrifices made by the Durham Pals in the First World War. The...
by Chris Lloyd | Durham, In Your Town, Latest
BESIDE the bandstand on the banks of the River Wear, on September 24, 1914, the young men of Durham – all friends together – gathered on the grassy expanse of the Racecourse and took the first steps on a journey that would lead them, within two years, to the slaughter...
by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
In a quiet, shady spot overlooking the gently rolling French countryside, a wrong going back 100 years was finally righted yesterday. A bench commemorating the ultimate sacrifice of hundreds of Durham Pals was unveiled on the Somme, following a fund-raising campaign...
by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
EXACTLY 100 years ago today was the Durham Light Infantry’s bloodiest day on the Somme. In one 24 hour period, 405 men were killed. Most of them perished in the Battle of Flers Courcelette, which was the first engagement in which the British deployed their new-fangled...
by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Darlington, Durham, In Your Town, Latest, Middlesbrough
A RELATIVE has revealed the fate of two soldiers captured in a rare photograph as they made their way to the Somme – where both would be casualties on the first day of that momentous battle. Jim Whitton of Darlington immediately recognised the image of his great uncle...
by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Durham, In Your Town, Latest
HISTORIANS are looking for help tracing the identity of First World War soldiers captured on photographs as they waited to go over the top 100 years ago. As the Battle of the Somme raged in 1916, men from the Durham Light Infantry queued to have their pictures taken...
by Chris Lloyd | Durham, In Your Town, Latest
THE country will fall silent on Friday to honour those who gave their lives in the bloodiest battle in British military history. In cities and villages across the region, the sacrifice of thousands of ordinary soldiers killed or injured during the Battle of the Somme...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
In the final part of his series tracing the battalion’s march to the Battle of the Somme, Tony Kearney finds the Durham Pals on the eve of slaughter. EXACTLY 100 years ago today, a former railway fitter lazed in the sun in a French farmyard, his back against a barn...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
IN the middle of June 1916, as the final preparations took place for the Big Push, the weather in France became miserable. Day after day it rained, filling the trenches with standing water and turning the battlefield to mud. Dug into their trenches outside the small...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
HISTORY books say that the Battle of the Somme began on July 1, 1916, but that was not the reality experienced by soldiers in the trenches. Every soldier on the Western Front, German and Allied, knew battle was coming: perhaps not where or when, but they knew the Big...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
AT the end of May, the Durham Pals were pulled back from the Somme’s frontline trenches and placed out of harm’s way in a camp at Warnimont Wood. Here, day after day, they practised attack on enemy held positions, unaware that the fateful first day of battle was now...
by Chris Lloyd | Durham, In Your Town, Latest
A DURHAM University student has taken the first steps in a poignant 950-mile journey on foot to the battlefields of the Somme. Jordan Blunsom, 22, will walk more than 30 miles a day over 31 days, raising cash for the veterans’ charity Walking with the Wounded. He will...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
LANCE-Corporal Frank Derwent Lockey was 34 when he was killed 100 years ago this week. He was part of a working party sent up to the frontline to repair the British barbed wire against German raids when he was hit in the head by a sniper. His friends later recounted...