by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Hartlepool, In Your Town, Latest, War Stories
Touching, handwritten messages and drawings from First World War soldiers, many of whom were killed, have been discovered in Hartlepool. Chris Webber reports. DEEP in the pages of a fragile, 100-year-old book compiled by Private William Tucker, are two pressed...
by Chris Lloyd | Hartlepool, In Your Town, Latest, War Stories
Early morning on December 16, 1914, Mary Stainthorpe, 13, was among an excited hubbub of children boarding their usual train taking them from their colliery homes in Durham to their grammar school at the coast. ONLY that morning the train didn’t take them to school in...
by Chris Lloyd | Diary of Gunner George James, Durham, In Your Town, Latest, War Stories
IN the faintest pencil amid the mud of the trenches around Ypres, Gunner George James writes his latest observations and experiences into his war diary. FEBRUARY 5, 1916 We have moved our positions owing to the Germans discovering our whereabouts. We have built and...
by Chris Lloyd | Diary of Gunner George James, Durham, In Your Town, Latest, War Stories
IN the faintest pencil amid the mud of the trenches around Ypres, Gunner George James wrote a diary which is now in the loving hands of his niece, Isabel Field. Memories began serialising his remarkable diary at the start of the year so that we are now in step with...
by Chris Lloyd | Centenary, Latest, War Stories
More than 1.5 million pages written by British soldiers describing life on the front line during The First World War are being published online by the National Archives. Gavin Engelbrecht dips into one remarkable account. WRITTEN in neat copperplate with a sharpened...
by Chris Lloyd | Diary of Gunner George James, Durham, In Your Town, Latest, War Stories
IN the second installment in Gunner George James’ diary, written 98 years ago, he has been withdrawn about 20 miles from the frontline at Ypres. Gunner James, aged about 20, was a miner from Littletown, a pit village to the east of Durham City. His diary is extremely...
by Chris Lloyd | Diary of Gunner George James, Durham, In Your Town, Latest, People, War Stories
Over six months, The Northern Echo serialised a First World War diary which was kindly lent to us by John Tyson, of Eaglescliffe. The diary was written by Gunner George James, who hailed from Littletown, a mining village a few miles to the east of Durham City, near...
by Chris Lloyd | In Your Town, Latest, Sedgefield, War Stories
AS many people who’ve delved into their family trees know, history is not always kind and convenient. After ten years of searching, Memories 152 finally told almost the full story of Pieter Vermote, who lies beneath a splendid Belgian headstone in Winterton...
by Chris Lloyd | Latest, War Stories
Ambulance trains bringing back the wounded from the front were so comfortable, one nurse reported, that the casualties could not sleep. The railways carried the soldiers off to the First World War frontline, and then they brought many of them home again – on ambulance...
by Chris Lloyd | Hartlepool, Hartlepool Bombardments, In Your Town, War Stories
Lawrence Reeve sat down to breakfast with his wife Martha and their four children. It was 8am. Lawrence was second-in-command of the War Signal Station at Castle Hill, Scarborough, and had just finished his night duty. It had probably been uneventful. It was 1914 and...
by Chris Lloyd | Hartlepool, Hartlepool Bombardments, In Your Town, Latest, War Stories
In December 1914, the horror of the First World War was visited on three North-East coastal towns in a naval bombardment which lasted less than an hour but which awoke an enduring British fighting spirit. Chris Lloyd reports. IT was a misty morning. Grey and dank....
by Chris Lloyd | Hartlepool, Hartlepool Bombardments, In Your Town, War Stories
ARTHUR Rodgers was there, 92 years ago, when time stopped. “I do remember this, ” he says. “It was near Christmas. There was a lady running away with a cat under one arm and a Christmas cake under the other. I’ve never forgotten that.”...
by Chris Lloyd | Belgian Refugees, In Your Town, Latest, Sedgefield, War Stories
There is a corner of Sedgefield that is forever Belgium. In fact, it is proudly Belgian. The colours of the national flag – black, yellow and red – on top of the headstone are almost as bold and as bright as the day they were placed there nearly 100 years ago. The...
by Chris Lloyd | Belgian Refugees, Latest, War Stories
ON August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia. On August 2, Germany demanded right of way across Belgium so that it could attack France, Russia’s ally. The Germans claimed that the French were about to invade Belgium, but the Belgian king and parliament...
by Chris Lloyd | Belgian Refugees, War Stories
WHEN the First World War broke out, Belgium was a small and comparatively new country. It was formed in 1830 with Britain promising to protect its borders. When, in August 1914, the German Kaiser marched into this tiny, proud and neutral nation, the British knew that...
by Chris Lloyd | Belgian Refugees, War Stories
‘THEY came back from church on a sunny day with a blue sky, and sat down to Sunday lunch. Suddenly, Scottish soldiers in blue kilts rushed down the streets shouting ‘the Germans are coming’ and they left their lunch on the table and went flying down...
