Lest we forget

FIRST WORLD WAR veteran Harry Holmes spoke today of the moment a German shell blasted him out of a mud-filled trench in Flanders - and back to Blighty.

Harry, 101, who lives in Guiseley, was speaking on the 80th anniversary of Armistice Day as he remembered his dead comrades. But he is still bitter at the officers who he claimed sent thousands of frightened young men to their deaths.

The centenarian is one of just a handful of old soldiers who survived this century's bloodiest conflict still alive in West Yorkshire.

Aged just 17 Harry's patriotic fervour led him to volunteer for service in Bradford in 1915, joining the Duke of Wellington Regiment. The young Private Holmes was sent to Ypres in Belgium.

As thousands of his comrades were cut down by enemy bullets, shells and gas he saw whole battalions wiped out, with the few survivors organised into new units.

He was shunted from one to another, serving with the 2nd, 3rd, 10th and 11th battalions during his two years in Flanders.

Recalling one of his regular forays into No Man's Land, Sheffield-born Harry said: "The Germans used to put their guns down outside their trenches when they were giving it up. We used to go out into No Man's Land and once took 17 of them prisoner on one day.''

Although he seldom thinks or talks about the war to this day, Harry remains angry at the politicians and generals who sent thousands to their deaths.

He is bitter, too, at he officers who used the barrel of a gun to force terrified young soldiers to go "over the top''.

Harry said: "The officers followed you around and you had to keep on going because they were at your backs with a gun - there was one of them, he was a bloody swine, and I could have shot the bugger many times.''

Remembering the attack which brought his battlefield days to an end, Harry said: "I got blown up at Ypres. It was a trench mortar - I could see the bugger coming and it blew me right up into the air. I was in a bloody mess.''

His body peppered with shrapnel, the young soldier spent several months in a hospital in southern England before eventually being invalided out of the Army in 1917.

Harry counts himself lucky that he missed the fighting at the Somme, where tens of thousands of Allied troops lost their lives.

He said: "With me being at Ypres I missed all that at the Somme. I was damn lucky.''

Back in Civvy Street the Leeds United fan worked as a bookmaker, a painter and decorator and ran a second-hand shop in Guiseley.

His brush with death appears not to have taken any years off him. Harry has outlived his wife, Priscilla, and both his daughter and son, Gladys and John. Now a great-great-grandfather he celebrated his 101st birthday last week.

Yesterday Harry was among veterans at a special lunch in Leeds during a two-day conference marking the 80th anniversary of Armistice Day.

'Our fight for the honour of a man they shot at dawn'

Private Henry MacDonald was one soldier who never came back - he was shot at dawn for desertion in 1916.

The Keighley soldier was one of the 306 soldiers executed by the British Army during the conflict.

His grandson Harry, who lives in Hampshire, has been fighting with other families for pardons for their loved-ones.

Earlier this year the Government refused to grant posthumous pardons despite a nationwide campaign. But it allowed six families to lay wreaths at the Cenotaph on Sunday.

Pte MacDonald was 32 and fought in the battle of the Somme where he was buried alive by a shell. After hospital treatment for shell-shock, he was posted back to the front but deserted to return to Keighley, worried about his pregnant wife.

He was arrested, sent back to France for a court martial and shot at dawn for going absent without leave.

Pte MacDonald's name was added to Keighley's roll of honour kept in the town's library in January.

T&A Opinion

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