A PRETTY altar cloth, festooned with colourful flowers, takes pride of place in Bradford Cathedral.

Made in 1918 by shellshocked soldiers returning to Bradford from the bloody battlefields of the First World War, it is a poignant reminder of the brutal fall-out from that terrible conflict.

When the war began, four years earlier, shellshock wasn’t recognised, and men suffering psychological effects of warfare were often treated as deserters.

Towards the end of the war, there was a gradual shift in treatment. To the traumatised men returning to Bradford from the Western Front, the city’s Abram Peel Auxiliary War Hospital offered a haven from the brutality of war.

The hospital opened in Bradford in July, 1917. Named after a former Lord Mayor of Bradford, it was one of the first hospitals to recognise the psychological scars of battle.

In his speech at the official opening, the Surgeon General said: “This war has brought with it new difficulties. We now have to deal with something more than shattered limbs; we have shattered nerves, the bravest hearts are now made to tremble. The same care and provision must be made for these sad maladies that are made for maimed and wounded men.

“I trust and believe men will receive (at the hospital) skilful treatment and kind sympathy.”

Corporal Ivor Watkins arrived in Bradford with a sign attached to him saying: 'Gas Shell - Very Severe'.

"When I got to Bradford I couldn't see. It was the most terrifying experience," he recalled. "It hit me very, very hard. For the first month or so I couldn't recognise anything, then there was a gradual haze. I had a steam kettle to inhale. Then I started smoking heavily as I thought to clear my chest. We were given cigarettes in hospital to soothe the nerves. We were treated right royally."

A year before the Abram Peel hospital opened, Bradford men were fighting in the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in British military history. On the first day alone, July 1, 1916, more than 1,000 Bradford soldiers - Pals and members of other battalions - were either killed or injured. This weekend marks the centenary of the end of the five-month battle.

On Saturday the Bradford World War One Group will unveil a memorial to soldiers from the district who fought and died on the Somme. A total of £5,485 has been raised from the Telegraph & Argus’s Honour the Pals appeal for the memorial, which will stand on the Serre Road, close to where hundreds of Bradford men fought and died.

The Lord Mayor of Bradford Councillor Geoff Reid and his wife, the Lady Mayoress, Chris Reid will unveil the monument. The £2742.50 raised by the Honour the Pals appeal was matched by Bradford Council.

For those who survived, Bradford hospitals played a vital role in their treatment and recovery. And volunteer groups also provided support. In Bradford WW1 Group’s book Bradford In The Great War, the city’s Khaki Club is described as a “tour de force in organisation and service”. The Khaki Club offered therapy through arts and crafts, and led to the creation of the aforementioned alter cloth, stitched by shellshocked soldiers.

In March 1915 the Committee of the Bradford Women’s Patrols met in the Midland Hotel to present to the Lord Mayor and other distinguished guests a case for a club for soldiers and sailors, providing comfortable, safe surroundings and wholesome food. Within days premises were found in Forster Square and quickly refurbished, with billiard tables, a reading and writing room, cafe, concert room, library and lounge. Donations from flag days and Bradford companies kept the club open until June, 1919.

Thanks to 200 volunteers on the committee rota, the club was open day and night. It had an estimated 1,200 visitors a day, including servicemen, family members and girlfriends.

As the St Luke’s War Hospital became established, wounded men began arriving in large numbers. Volunteers from the Khaki Club met 127 convoys, bringing in a total of 19,244 men. From 1917 to June, 1919, volunteers from the Men’s Committee of the club met every train coming into Bradford after 10pm, “inviting every weary man to the Khaki Club for a free meal and hot drink”. Equal care was taken of men departing for the battlefields, who were seen off with a cheery wave.

“It is difficult to quantify the effect such a wonderful organisation must have had on serving men and their families,” says Tricia Platts, president of Bradford WW1 Group. “For an exhausted, battle-weary man, the journey home from the trenches was long and dreary. Imagine arriving on a cold, dark night to be greeted by hot food and drinks, and the support of willing volunteers. And during leave, to have the club provide recreation, companionship and a comfortable meeting place must have been a welcome relief.”

The club’s activities expanded across the city, and when Abram Peel Hospital opened in Leeds Road in 1917 volunteers sought useful work to do there. Set up as a military establishment for neurological disorders, Abram Peel was staffed by the Royal Army Medical Corps and Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service.

One of the founders of the Khaki Club was Louisa Pesel, Bradford-born daughter of a German merchant. As well as teaching embroidery to wounded soldiers in the First World War, she worked with the Red Cross, distributing cross-stitch kits to POWs in the Second World War.

Louisa (1870-1947) studied design and went on to be director of the Royal Hellenic School of Needlework and Laces in Athens. Returning to England, she worked with shellshocked soldiers on embroidering what became known as the ‘Khaki Cloth’, a cross-stitch frontlet made at the Khaki Club in autumn 1918 for use at services in Abram Peel.

The Pesel Collection of Collected and Created works, bequeathed to the University of Leeds in 1947, consists of more than 400 embroidered items from around the world, and includes some of Louisa’s own pieces and a collection of her notebooks, photographs, articles and drawings.

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