Submitted by Peter Marwood, a long term resident of Richmond.
I was brought up on my late father’s farm in Langthorne near Bedale.
Driver John Marwood 671397 of the 379th Battery, Royal Field Artillery was my father’s brother and my uncle.
John Marwood was born at Gayles near Richmond on the 16th of May 1890. He was the second of four children of John and Caroline Marwood.
The family initially lived at Gayles where John senior was self employed as a master carpenter. By 1901 the family had moved to a rented farm at Aske Moor and began farming. After a few years they moved to a larger and better farm which was Low Coalsgarth farm. John is listed in the 1911 census as working as a gardener at Selaby Hall near Gainford. The family were living at the farm at the time of John’s death in France.
He was wounded on the Somme during the famous Kaiserschlacht offensive which began on the 21st March 1918. My father and his other brother Harry recounted that John had been badly wounded at the Front and was taken to hospital in Rouen but sadly died of his wounds on the 25th of March 1918 aged 28.
He is buried in the St Sever cemetery in Rouen.
During the 1950s my father would usually attend the Great Yorkshire Show, along with my Uncle Harry and one older brother and if we were lucky myself or my younger brother would get to go too. There was always a demonstration by the Artillery of horse drawn guns and father would say “That’s what your late uncle John did during the Great War”.
John’s effects, that were returned from France, were kept on our farm. There were photographs, a uniform and a sword which fascinated us children. Sadly these possessions were lost when my father passed away and we left the farm.
John’s death is also commemorated on grandparents gravestone in Middleton Tyas.
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John M Hewison
John Matthew Hewison lived in Penshaw and enlisted at the start of the war at Shiney Row. He was the son of Matthew and Anne Hewison of Shiney Row and he was married to Agnes. He would have left for France in late August 1915 and the 8th Battalion would have been involved in training and undergoing acclimatisation visits to the front line when he was killed in action on September 22nd. 14961 Private John Hewison died at the age of 22 and had been in France for only 3 weeks. He was awarded the 14/15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. His wife inherited his effects of 14s/4d and a gratuity of £3-10s. He was buried at Brewery Orchard Cemetery, Bois-Grenier.
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Austin Graham
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Flora Sandes
Researched by John Mills. Flora Sandes was the only woman to officially fight on the front line during WW1, having joined the Serbian Army. Flora was born on the 26th January 1876 in Nether Poppleton, near York, the youngest of eight children. From an early age she exhibited an adventurous nature, a real tomboy, somewhat surprising for the daughter of a vicar! At the aged of 9 the family moved to rural Suffolk. Even her middle class upbringing didn’t dull her desire for adventure. After school she trained as a stenographer in London and scrapped together all her money, and together with the proceeds of a legacy from an uncle she went off to see the world travelling to places like Egypt, Canada and America. Flora was 38 years old when WW1 broke out and was living in London at the time. She enlisted as an Ambulance Service Volunteer and just 8 days later she was on her way to Serbia with the first volunteer unit to leave Britain. She worked in Military Hospitals and by October 1915 was fluent in the Serbian language. She eventually enlisted in the Serbian Army, one of the few countries in the world that accepted female soldiers. She soon made a name for herself, rising through the ranks to Sergeant within a year. It wasn’t just soldiering that Flora matched her male counterparts. She could hold her own racing cars, shooting, smoking and drinking. She survived the front line fighting, received a terrible shrapnel…