Table Of ContentDedication
This book is dedicated respectfully to the memory of all those whose 1914-18
lives are documented in the Liddle Collection of First World War Archives
Materials in Brotherton Library, the University of Leeds
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS
Copyright © Peter Liddle 2010
ISBN 978 1 84884 234 2
Print ISBN: 978-1-84884234-2
ePub ISBN: 9781844686247
The right of Peter Liddle to be identified as Author of this Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction
SECTION ONE PRE-1914
1 Jimmy Hooper - A 1904 Apprenticeship in Sail 2 Tom Easton - A
Northumberland Pit Boy 3 Nellie Elsdon - Working-Class Life in
Sunderland 4 Howard Marten
- Middle-Class Life and Work in London
5 John Fletcher
-The Air Battalion in the Regular Army
6 Margery Corbett Ashby
-Political Activist and Suffragist
7 Donald Macdonald
- A Crofter's Boyhood in the Hebrides
8 George Ives
- Boer War Trooper and Colonist to Canada
SECTION TWO THE FIRST WORLD WAR
1 Victor Goddard - Training in Balloons 2 Robin Money
- The Western Front, August 1914-1918
3 Charles Hughes-Hallett
- The Dardanelles and Jutland
4 James Marshall-Cornwall
- An Intelligence Officer on the Western Front95
5 Emanuel Shinwell - Labour Relations 6 ‘Peter’ Fullard - Fighter
Pilot 7 Henry Moore - Citizen Soldier at Cambrai 8 Elsie Knocker
- Front Line Nurse in Belgium, August 1914-1917
9 Barnes Wallis - Rigid Airship Designer 10 Henry Rich
- Indian Army, Mesopotamia and Turkish POW
11 Clare Vyner - Jutland 12 James Grimshaw, VC
- Lancashire Fusilier at the Gallipoli Landings 13 Gordon Jacob -
Western Front and German POW
14 Alexander Savory - Indian Army at Gallipoli 15 Charles Phillips -
Kings African Rifles in East Africa 16 Florence Farmborough - Nurse for
the Russians 17 Norman Holbrook, VC
- Submarine Exploit at the Dardanelles, 1914
18 Victor Silvester
- Soldier in France, Ambulance Service in Italy 19 John Smythe, VC -
Indian Army in France, 1915
20 Howard Marten
- Conscientious Objector, Death Sentence in France 21 Harold
Macmillan
- Grenadier Guards Officer in France
Index
Acknowledgements
My appreciation must first be expressed in relation to all the people mentioned
in this book and those who namelessly stand with them in being the subject of
my interviews over the last forty years. I have clear memories of so many and I
recognize the privilege bound up with my work.
That work involved the building of two archives and I must thank those in
institutional responsibility at Sunderland Polytechnic (now Sunderland
University) for sanctioning my commitment to rescuing 1914-18 personal
experience testimony, then those in management responsibility at the University
of Leeds for taking on a new ‘special collection’, and finally the Trustees of the
Second World War Experience Centre in Leeds for their faith in creating the
second archive. In these respects, HWL Miller at Sunderland, David Dilks and
Reg Carr at the University of Leeds, Graham Stow and Hugh Cecil of the Centre
in Horsforth were the men to whom I remain personally indebted in the laying of
foundation stones.
Each stage in the building was facilitated by young people, as well as those
in mid-career or more mature. For this volume, I have in mind of the young
people Kevin Kelly in Sunderland, so well informed on the Royal Flying Corps,
and in Leeds, Adam Smith and Matthew Richardson, laying down the
foundation of their successful museum careers. With similar warmth of recall I
remember Nick Gander and Andrew Cheney, also in Leeds.
From what might arguably be called ‘middle age’, Nobby Clark, Nell Sadler,
Maureen Hine, Bill Lawson and Joan Henshaw helped me in the North-East, and
of more senior years in Sunderland, Charlie Ward meticulously trawled through
Who's Who and other reference sources for 1914-18 men and women while
nonagenarian, Bill Weatherall, addressed countless envelopes to establish
contact with those found by this research. If I were to have had a sense of
mission, it was certainly shared by others. I shall not forget too the generosity of
Brigadier Maurice Lush who did so much to fuel with encouragement and
resources the development of the archive in Sunderland.
At the University of Leeds, I shall always affectionately remember
volunteers Albert Smith, Gerry Godfrey, Braham Myers, all Second World War
veterans, as I shall the years of selfless dedication to the rescue cause by Keith
and Brenda Clifton. Terry Mumford, whose daughter, Carolyn, transcribed
almost all of the interviews chosen for this book, was also dedicated to the cause
of the archive transferred to Leeds, her husband, Trevor, generous in support of
Description:Peter Liddle was a pioneer in the recording of memories of personal experience in the First World War and in the social background of those who lived through those years. Later he moved into the recording of men and women for whom the Second World War was the formative experience of their lives. In
