DAVID P Whithorn, president of Bus to Bradford - a group of City fans who commemorate players killed in the First World War - shares his recent discovery of a missing platoon of local men.

“It was a truly historic ‘red letter’ morning for me to find 30 (and probably many more to come) ‘missing’ Bradford Pals. Historian Andrew Charles Bolt posted this 1916 Bradford newspaper photograph entitled ‘Bradford Pals in India’ with three soldiers - William Peel (textile waste dealer), John Percival Dean (postman) and Gilbert Armitage Rawnsley (clerk) - in tropical kit.

‘Surely not’ I thought. ‘Surely they mean Egypt’...but no, an Indian place name was included.

Checking out the names given with the 1914-18 medal rolls did not put any of these men with the West Yorkshire Regiment, however there was a GA Rawnsley with the Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards). Then it was back to the lists of names of the first 1,000 of the Bradford Battalion compiled in October 1914 - all three soldiers were found listed on it. Armed now with their full names, it was back to the medal rolls, and I found the other two, also both to the Yorkshire Regiment, all three regimental numbers close.

Working through two sheets from the Yorkshire Regt Medal Roll, I found around 30 known members of the 1st Bradford Pals, all now in the Yorkshire Regiment, and there likely will be more yet.

Given the India connection, this will be the 1st Bn Yorkshire Regt who were stationed in pre-war India and remained there throughout. An explanation is that the Bradford Pals (16th and 18th Bns) WYR were significantly over-strength in 1915. It is known that their numbers were ‘pruned’ in England to build up other WYR battalions - in doing so, these men would have kept their distinctive ‘16/’ and’18/’ regimental numbers and thus be easy to trace. Not so if they were sent to another regiment, eg the Yorkshire Regiment, they would get new numbers and their old ones wouldn’t be recorded in1914-18 medal rolls. These Pals would therefore be lost to history. Here in this photograph is a ‘lost platoon’ of the Bradford Pals.

In India in April 1916 there is no doubt these Bradford Pals would have stuck together, sharing news from home and fellow Pals, now newly arrived in France. Imagine how news of the destruction of the Bradford Pals on July 1 1916 hit home when letters bringing this news arrived in camp in India. The term ‘survivor guilt’ is relatively new, but the feeling isn’t - these Bradford Pals in India would come safely home, well almost all of them - John Yeadon, a dyer’s labourer, did not come home (cwgc.org/find-wa…/casualty/1482369/yeadon,-john). John once stood in the queue at the Mechanics Institute in Bradford in September 1914 with his friends to join the Bradford Pals. Today John Yeadon and this ‘missing platoon’ of Bradford Pals have been rediscovered - not forgotten - by those who care.

What this might mean for some Bradford families is that if they have relatives’ medals from WW1 and these are stamped as ‘Yorks Regt’ as opposed to ‘W.Yorks Regt’ and there is a five-digit regimental number beginning with ‘219...’ this relative just might also once have been a Bradford Pal.”