One small town’s story captures wartime spirit

ARTHUR PEARSON was among those eager to sign up in September 1914.

“There were forms to sign and vows to vow,” he later wrote. “We swore to be true and loyal soldiers, to serve king and country until ‘death us did part.’ I think I got a shilling, but I cannot clearly remember.” These are his memories of signing up for the Leeds Pals at the city’s town hall.

Pearson is one of several people whose wartime stories feature in Mark Saville’s new book Horsforth: The Great War. The book, part funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, charts the over-arching story of the 1,570 men and 27 women from the town, on the edge of Leeds, who went off to fight. “They were mostly single men, under the age of 22, either looking for some excitement in their lives or to escape unemployment and poverty,” he says.

Those initial recruits from Horsforth found themselves being sent to training camps right across Yorkshire and beyond. The Leeds Rifles went to Scarborough, where they might have spotted local legend Vivian Gaskell Blackburn landing his rickety home-made aircraft on the South Bay sands. Those who joined the Duke of Wellington’s were sent to Marske, further up the coast, while the Wharfedale Howitzers headed to Pembrey in Wales.

Pearson had to wait another three weeks before he was given his orders. He was told to be at Leeds North East Station on September 25 with a pair of boots, his kit bag and a cane, which acted as a substitute rifle. He describes the chaotic scene that greeted him at the station. “Men and boys, with wives, sisters, sweethearts and fathers, men carrying crammed kit-bags and an ash stick, relatives with boxes and parcels of cakes and tarts baked by loving hands in case there should be no food at our far away destination in the wilds.”

Two trains took 950 of the new recruits to Masham, in North Yorkshire, as Pearson later recalled. “I got into a full carriage of glowing, enthusiastic youth. Before many miles had passed, someone had broken the ice and cigarettes began to circulate. When I refused one and said that I did not smoke, a voice said ‘a fine so-and-so soldier you’ll make.’ That was a remark which I never forgot when ploughing through thick, muddy trenches to end up a well-drilled, disciplined, wounded warrior.”

The local newspapers in Leeds were on hand to capture the frisson of excitement as the trains departed. “Within the precincts there were at least 20,000 people,” one reporter wrote. “This was not an occasion for tears and we saw no tears shed – nothing but smiles and words of good cheer.”

It was a similar picture in nearby Otley where the Wharfedale & Airedale Observer described the scenes at the town’s station where those who had joined the Howitzers gathered before heading off to their training camps.

“Even the railway officials have joined in the patriotic feeling and the trains carrying the recruits have steamed out of the station amidst a veritable cannonade of ‘fog signals.’”

Some of the men thought they would be sent off to fight before Christmas but in many cases it wasn’t until deep into 1915 before they went abroad. The Leeds Pals were shipped to Egypt to fend off the Ottoman Turks, while the Wharfedale Howitzers and the Duke of Wellington’s headed straight to France.

Saville says during the initial months of the war brass bands would accompany the recruitment buses that toured Leeds and neighbouring towns as the army tried to drum up support. Many heeded the call but later, as the war stagnated, some had to be dragged through the tribunal courts.

One of the men tasked with getting new recruits to sign up was Captain George Clifford Whitaker. He came from a wealthy family and at 6ft 2ins cut an imposing figure, playing rugby for Headingley before the war.

In 1916 he was given his commission and went across to France. “He was in C Company of the Leeds Pals, the same as Arthur Pearson,” says Saville. The two men took part in the Somme Offensive. “They both went over the top near Serre on the first day and Pearson saw him cut down before he reached the wire. Pearson was lucky and ended up in a crater with eight other men, although only two of them got out alive.”

Several months later at the start of 1917, Pearson was part of a group of soldiers sent back to the area to identify and retrieve some of the bodies. “He actually came across Whitaker’s body and put what was left of him in a sack and brought him back so he could be buried.”

Pearson himself survived the war and returned to Yorkshire, settling in Horsforth, where he remained for the rest of his life.

By the time the guns finally fell silent a total of 249 people from the town had been killed as a result of the conflict.

After the war ended a tree was planted for each person killed and today these can still be seen, along with a plaque, on Stanhope Drive – a living reminder of those who lost their lives.

“Horsforth is just an ordinary town,” says Saville. “To find so much about it that has been forgotten, such as the 73 Belgian refugees that we housed, the shell factory at Newlay – where girls from all over Yorkshire were sent to work, and all those 1,450 men and women who came back, whose families today might never know what they did. It’s quite incredible – and this was replicated all over the country.”

• Horsforth: The Great War is available, priced £12, from Horsforth Museum, The Green, Horsforth, 
LS18 5JB.

• As the nation marks a century since the outbreak of the First World War, The Yorkshire Post wants to know why it remains important for people to support the Royal British Legion and wear a poppy.

Do you wear one – and why? Are you remembering someone special? Please let us know.

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