My father - an unsung hero of the Somme

A crowd of around 80 gathered in Centenary Square yesterday to commemorate the men of the Bradford Pals, who died in battle near the French village of Serre on July 1, 1916.

At the end of the battle's first hour more than 1,700 men from the city had been killed or seriously injured.

Bradford's Lord Mayor, Councillor Irene Ellison-Wood, paid tribute to the men and announced the ceremony would now become an annual event on the civic calendar.

Yesterday was particularly poignant for one woman, whose father was an unsung hero of the Somme.

Barbara Walker, 81, who lives in Undercliffe, spoke to the Telegraph & Argus about her father's battlefield legacy.

Mrs Walker's father never talked about the horrors he lived through as a teenage soldier in France, but he kept his mementoes in a treasured chocolate tin issued to him and his fellow fighters as a gift of thanks from Queen Mary.

It contained his cap badges from the West Yorkshire Regiment, his three First World War medals and the two bullets that had to be dug from his leg when he was injured in action at the Somme.

Although he never talked about the trauma he suffered and witnessed on the front line, he captured his emotions at the time by scribbling them down in an autograph book, which he also left to be passed down. The tattered book also includes moving poems written by the men with whom he served in the trenches.

Jim Haworth Leach, the son of a Methodist minister, was 19 when he signed up with the Bradford Pals. He was sent to the trenches and became a runner, dodging enemy fire to carry messages between units.

On one of these missions he stumbled across a badly injured officer whom he carried back to safety. The man later died but Private Leach's bravery was not forgotten by the captain's family, who sent him a silver cigarette case in thanks.

Mrs Walker said: "My dad was a very quiet man. He never spoke about what he went through and what he did for that man never got in the limelight. If it had, he would have got a bravery medal."

Pte Leach's leg injuries earned him a voyage back home but it was not long before he was back in the fighting lines with the regiment.

At the end of the war he and five fellow Somme survivors met at the Boy and Barrel pub in Westgate, to form the Bradford Pals Association, which ended in the 1990s after the last of its members died.

Jim later worked in the mills. He was in his 80s when he died.

Mrs Walker said: "The Pals should never be forgotten. They were brave and good men who are part of our history and their stories should live on."