by Chris Lloyd | 1916 Centenary, Centenary, Harrogate, In Your Town, Latest, Ripon, War Stories, York
THE family of a soldier awarded the Victoria Cross for leading a counter-attack, against greatly superior numbers, during a key part of the Battle of the Somme have spoken of their pride after a memorial to honour him was unveiled in his home town. Numerous members of...
by Chris Lloyd | 1916 Centenary, Centenary
The battalions of the Durham Light Infantry paid heavily for its infamous assault on the Butte de Warlencourt, an ugly mound of land dubbed ‘that miniature Gibraltar’. Chris Lloyd counts the cost. THE tree-lined D929 runs dead straight through the flat fields on the...
by Chris Lloyd | 1916 Centenary, Centenary, In Your Town, Latest, Northallerton, Richmond, Thirsk, War Stories
A Lottery-funded project has documented the story of the community hospitals of the First World War. Ashley Barnard reports. THE role of the Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses throughout the First World War was vital, as swathes of injured men came back from the front...
by Chris Lloyd | 1916 Centenary, Centenary, Latest, War Stories
A Darlington historian has found the stories behind the names on a plaque to fallen First World War soldiers in one of the town’s churches. Chris Webber talked to him. FRANCIS LOVE TELFORD: just one more name on a plaque to the war dead in just another ordinary small...
by Chris Lloyd | 1916 Centenary, Centenary, Ferryhill, In Your Town, Latest, War Stories
YOUNGSTERS in County Durham are learning how the everyday lives of children their age were affected as the First World War raged in Western Europe a hundred years ago. As the men of the Durham Light Infantry laid down their lives in the fields of France, families on...
by Chris Lloyd | 1916 Centenary, Centenary, Latest
THEY died in their thousands and if they had failed in their objective millions of British people would have known severe hunger, even starvation; the war would have been lost and the history of the world would have been entirely different. Yet the 250,000 sailors of...
by Chris Lloyd | 1916 Centenary, Centenary, Latest
A GROUP of young people are looking into how life as a child in the First World War compares to living in the 21st Century. Investing in Children secured £9,900 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help with the new project, entitled “What happened to children whose...
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 | 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...
by Chris Lloyd | In Your Town, Latest, Richmond, War Stories
ONE hundred years ago this weekend, 16 men were secretly spirited out of the dungeons of Richmond castle and sent by train to the killing fields of northern France where their own government hoped they would be shot at dawn by their fellow countrymen pour encourager...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
THE third and final time the Durham Pals went into the frontline trenches ahead of the Battle of the Somme was by far the toughest. In their first two spells at the front in northern France, the 18th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry held the line at...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
ON the evening of May 14, 1916, for the third and final time before the fateful first day of the Battle of the Somme, the Durham Pals went back in the frontline trenches of the Somme. The 18th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry had two previous experiences of life...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
DURING the first few days of May 1916, the Durham Pals were able to enjoy some well-deserved respite after the traumas of Easter Week. In their four days in the waterlogged trenches over Easter, 18th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry had seen one of their...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
EASTER Week of 1916 saw the Durham Pals waist-deep in water and thoroughly miserable. Exactly 100 years ago Easter was three weeks later than this year, and so it was on April 20 – Maundy Thursday – that the volunteers of 18th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
CONDITIONS in the Durham Pals’ sodden camp in the woods were so bad 100 years ago that most were relieved to go back into the trenches. On the afternoon of Maundy Thursday – April 20, 1916 – the 18th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry – commonly known as the...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
AFTER their baptism of fire during their first five days in the trenches, the Durham Pals received the order to withdraw, and at 8pm on April 3, 1916 they were relieved by the 12th Yorks and Lancs. During their first five-day taste, they’d been constantly under threat...
by Chris Lloyd | DLI Somme Diary, Durham, In Your Town, War Stories
AT dusk on March 29, 1916, the Durham Pals silently filed into the battered frontline trenches to the east of Auchonvillers, in northern France, and under cover of darkness took over the posts from the Royal Irish Rifles. Earlier that day, the battalion’s commanding...
