War, as we have seen on these pages over the last four months, affects soldiers in a variety of ways. The physical wounds they may suffer are mirrored by the mental wounds many bring back with them.

A case in point is recounted here by engineer, writer and former London Labour councillor Bill Holdsworth. In a piece entitled Searching For The Truth, he tells the story of his Bradford-born father, also called Bill Holdsworth.

“In North London’s Thirties streets, grimed with poverty, I was known as ‘Young Yorkie’. My father, born at 5 Hallfield Road, Bradford, in 1893, the eldest of nine children from an Irish mother, was a man of few words.

“A journeyman painter and decorator skilled at his task, he had, I believed, worked in a coalmine.

“He fought in all the major battlefields of the First World War with the Yorkshire Light Infantry at Mons, Ypres, the Somme and Passchendaele, where his brother Edwin, who had joined the Northumberland Fusiliers had been blown up to land in my dad’s arms.

“Gassed four times, he had, in his rare moments of communication, vividly described how he survived these attacks of mustard gas from his coal-mining knowledge. The gas, Billy, stays a few inches off water-filled shell holes. If you breathed just over the water, you got less.”

“He would show me how by climbing under the wooden table and also tell me how he would have to cut out coal crawling along a seam 18 inches high with one’s backbone covered in ‘buttons’ – scabs that never healed from the impacts of the coal seam’s black jagged roof.

“In the 20 years before he died from destroyed lungs in 1949, he would, perhaps once a year, take me on a 24 bus to visit old comrades at St James’s Barracks.

“Telling me to take off my cap as we passed the Cenotaph in Whitehall, and then how at the first Remembrance Sunday, hundreds of old comrades held up their Army Discharge book as a salute of disgust at the slaughter of the thousands of young men in the mud of Flanders.

“My mother Nancy often wondered if he was part of the mutiny at E’taples in September 1917, or one of the many riots, strikes and other conflagrations that followed. But nothing was said and all the records of these mutinies by the British Army were shredded by the Ministry of War.

“On another rare day out we passed an old soldier, campaign medals shining brightly. He was legless and had only one arm sitting on a cushioned plate in the local High Street, selling matches. My dad gave him a two-shilling piece.

“This was a weekly wage in those days for my family. ‘But dad we have nothing now’, I said. His reply was short. ‘We have more than he does. He gets nowt’.

“But those were the few good times with my Yorkshire-born father. He stole money from my hard-working mother for drink. He swore and destroyed a real kettle drum given to me by an uncle.

“He was always angry and abusive. Over the years I would wonder where he lost his youth and dreams.

“I had thought I was his only child. This was dashed a few years ago when my daughter Claire, living in Ireland, was seeking to discover if my Irish grandmother, Margaret O’Hara, with flaming red hair, was born in Dublin, as the way my father told it.

“This was not true. With the discovery that he had been married in Pudsey Parish Church to a Jane Hincliffe with his first child, Carrie (1913-1980), followed by Ada, (1913-1970). Were these twin girls, I wonder?

“Then James Ackroyd, named after his father (1916-1979), followed by Irene (1920-1989) and another son Lawrence (1923-1977).

“What happened? Why did he leave his family and come to London where, according to my mother, I was conceived in a field in Edgware in the summer of 1928?

“Had the terrors of war destroyed this man’s heart and humanity? Were the few stories he told me true? I could have known nine aunts and uncles and to have been partly related to five brothers and sisters.

“My father’s youngest sister, Norah, died in 1990 at the age of 76. I was then 61 with so much to tell her of my own eclectic and interesting life and to learn about hers.

“His last work was to cut the glass out of the domed roof above St Pancras Station before the Blitzkrieg of the Second World War.

“He was unable to breathe and his anger grew. In the end a tube was inserted in his throat. He was no longer able to swallow his betting slips in dark brown beer when the police raided the Crowndale Arms for illegal gambling.

“Neither could he sing Red Sails In The Sunset while he brushed his bowler hat, or with his father’s gold fob watch, brought out for the weekend from the pawn shop to be smartly dressed, walk behind the Salvation Army Band as far as his local.

“His last words to me before he died were, ‘Go away. Go away’.”

 

Beverley Thompson’s grandfather Arthur Chambers, who lived at 72 Ingleby Road, was so keen to join up that along with two friends – called Briggs and Bower – he walked to Halifax to sign on for the 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment.

Many other Bradford men took this road in 1914, eager to be part of what became known as ‘Kitchener’s Army’.

Beverley takes up the story: “Arthur landed at Sulva Bay, Gallipoli, and managed to stay safe at first. The men dug trenches but ran out of water, so he crawled out (against orders) and got a bottle and got back safely.

“The others said, ‘How have you done that?’ He said, ‘Easy. Do you want me to get you one?’ So he went out again, only this time he was shot in the leg and couldn’t move.

“The men threw a sandbag out to cover his head until it got dark, then they went to get him back in.

“Arthur was then shipped back to a hospital in Malta, then sent back to Manchester by boat. He had been told he would be going on a particular ship, but it was changed at the last minute to a different one. The first ship was torpedoed and sank, so he was lucky.”

Arthur Chambers was transferred to St Luke’s Hospital where he had up to 11 operations over a number of years. Beverley remembers that he had a built-up shoe and had to walk with crutches.

“He was a keen footballer before the war – he played for Fairweather Green and Brownroyd, he had medals. But then the war came and, of course, he could never play football again.”

 

Arthur Chambers lived to tell the tale of his war experience. Captain John Alfred Emsley, of the 2/6 Battalion, Prince of Wales Regiment, did not.

Although he served right through the war he died of influenza, as did millions more, after the Armistice in 1918.

The son of a successful Bradford textile manufacturer, John Emsley joined the Territorials on June 30, 1908, when he was 17.

According to the Yorkshire Observer of December 3, 1918: “Soon after the outbreak of war he was appointed adjutant of the 2/6 Battalion and in due time accompanied his unit to France and was attached to the 62nd Division.

“He fought through the Somme and Cambrai battles and – though he went ‘over the top’ six times and on two occasions his unit lost 25 per cent of its officers – he escaped without a scratch.

“In January last he was mentioned in dispatches. Returning from France last February he was given a post on the staff in Ireland and he continued to be attached to the staff in that country or in England up to the time of his death.”

He died aged 28 at the military hospital in Clipstone Camp. His funeral was reported in the Yorkshire Observer.

“Military honours were according the deceased officer, and a large company of personal and business friends present was signal proof of the esteem entertained for him in a wide circle and of sympathy felt for his bereaved parents.

“All the blinds were drawn on the route of the cortege from Hedgenook to Allerton Wesleyan Chapel and reverent crowds were assembled on the road sides to pay their tribute of respect.”

There is a memorial to him in Scholemoor Cemetery, where he is buried.

 

Like Captain Emsley, John William Scruton, of Ingrow, Keighley, was a soldiers’ soldier. He served in the Royal Lancaster Regiment from 1894 to 1906, during which time he was sent to Malta, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Africa.

When Britain declared war on Germany in August, 1914, he immediately re-enlisted at the age of 42.

He served for more than two years as Sergeant Major and Quartermaster Sergeant at an Army school of instruction in France. He was demoblised in 1919 and returned home to Maise Street, Ingrow.

He died in 1927. More than 60 years later a large collection of his military memorabilia was donated by his grand-daughter, Mrs Jean Ackroyd, of Horton Bank Top, Bradford, to the King’s Own Regimental Museum in Lancaster.

 

Captain Henry Whitterton Robinson, who lived in Low Moor and had attended Bradford Grammar School and Leeds University, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and was sent out to the Western Front in 1914.

Such was his bravery under fire that he was awarded the Military Cross.

A short contemporary newspaper report stated: “In spite of continuous shell firing, during which his aid post sustained two direct hits, Captain Robinson worked without ceasing, at the same time giving unremitting attention to the wounded and organising bearer squads.”

The son of Doctor A H Robinson JP, his intention was that after the war he would return to Bradford and assist his father in his extensive practice. Happily, he survived to marry.

His daughter, Mrs J Mullins, of Shipley, kindly sent in the newspaper article.

Share your memories with us by sending your letters and pictures to: Jim Greenhalf, Newsroom, Telegraph & Argus, Hall Ings, Bradford, BD1 1JR or e-mail jim.greenhalf@telegraphandargus.co.uk