Families tears’ for heroes they never even met

ETHEL Bloomfield never knew what happened to her husband, Herbert Allcock.

A soldier from Leeds, he was serving with the York and Lancaster Regiment when he and several of his comrades disappeared in October 1914. It was believed they were killed in battle, but Ethel, who never remarried, went to her grave at the age of 91 without ever knowing for certain what happened to him.

His fate could quite easily have remained a mystery had it not been for the chance discovery of the remains of 15 British soldiers from the 2nd Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment. The bodies were spotted during construction work near the French village of Beaucamps-Ligny. This was in 2009, after which began the painstaking task of trying to identify the remains and track down any surviving relatives.

DNA samples were used to identify 11 of the men and last month all 15 soldiers were reburied with full military honours at a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Bois-Grenier, near Lille.

Among them was 32 year-old Herbert Allcock. He had followed in his father’s footsteps to become a joiner before joining the York and Lancaster Regiment in 1902. He initially enlisted for three years but chose to extend this to eight, serving in India for five years.

He was with the Army Reserve when war broke and was among those killed in action on October 18, 1914. Marlene Jackson, a retired teacher who lives in Lancashire, only discovered she had a great-uncle when she was told her DNA matched that of Pte Allcock.

“Nobody talked about the war, so I didn’t even know I had a great-uncle,” she says.

Marlene and her family were among the relatives of the 15 fallen who travelled to France for the reinterment ceremony. “There’s a feeling of pride that someone from my family had been in that war, but also concern because I hope he didn’t suffer too much.”

She feels the ceremony was a fitting tribute. “We left a white rose for Yorkshire and we’ve bought one of the ceramic poppies [from the Tower of London exhibition] which we’ll take with us when we go back next year.”

Another of those identified was Ernest Oxer who came from a mining family in Swinton, near Rotherham. He served with the 1st Battalion, including a stint in India, and married Ada Hakin in the spring of 1914.

He was one of three brothers killed during the course of the Great War and in a cruel twist of fate he died less than a month before the birth of his baby son, who was named Ernest in honour of his fallen father.

For Amanda Edwards, who travelled from her home in South Yorkshire to France for the ceremony with her mother Maureen Simpson, it was the chance to find out more about her great-grandfather, Private John Brameld.

It was the culmination of a journey that first began five years earlier. “I got an email out of the blue from a genealogist saying that 15 bodies of British soldiers had been found in northern France and that one of them might have been my great-grandfather,” she says.

“They found bones, boots, cap badges and one or two other things, but nothing with any names on. So they asked if we could do a DNA test.”

These were carried out in 2013 and earlier this year more than 30 families that had been involved were invited to a meeting with Ministry of Defence officials in Sheffield where they were told that 11 of the bodies had been identified. Amanda found out details about his life that she had never known. “I didn’t know much about him because it wasn’t something my family talked about,” she says.

Born in Sheffield, John Brameld was the eldest of five children. He started out as a grinder in the cutlery industry before enlisting with the York and Lancaster Regiment in 1903. After three years he was discharged to the Army Reserve. He then married Rachel Forster in 1908 and they had two children – Edna and Arthur.

“When war broke he was just 90 days from finishing with the Army Reserve and he wouldn’t have had to go. But because he was still a reservist he didn’t have a choice.”

Pte Brameld and his battalion arrived in France at the start of September. “They were sent to the wrong part of France and ended up at St Nazaire and had to trek right through France. They took part in the First Battle of Aisne and then went on to Beaucamps-Ligny,” Amanda adds.

She says reading the battalion’s war diary was “heart-breaking”. “It was about teatime and they’d been stood down and then they were sent out to see if they could advance any further and that was it, they were gone.”

It is believed that they stumbled on enemy soldiers by accident. “The Germans did bury them and put up a wooden marker but it must have been blown up or destroyed soon afterwards because no-one knew exactly what happened to them.”

Amanda says it was a “humbling” experience to see her great-grandfather finally being laid to rest after all this time.

“I couldn’t help think that my great-grandmother and her children should have been there because they went to their grave not knowing exactly what happened to him. They probably accepted he was dead but there’s always that haunting uncertainty.”

Despite this she says the discovery of her great-grandfather’s fate hasn’t been a sorrowful experience. “He’s become a real person to us, perhaps the most important in the family, and this has allowed us to build a picture of him that we didn’t have before.”