Vicky Hurwood’s great uncle, Septimus Frederick Herbert Allen was born in Richmond on 1 December 1891. He was the seventh son of Leonard and Mary Allan.
He was awarded the 1915 Star and so joined the British Army before the introduction of conscription. Arriving in France on 25 January 1915, he initially served with the Army Service Corps before being transfered to the 9th battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers. 48457 Private Septimus Allan was Killed in Action on 25th November 1917 and having no known grave he is one of the 35,000 men commemorated on the Arras Memorial. His name is also listed on the Richmond War Memorial.
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Harold Moore
Harold Moore was born around 1898 at Mirkport near Hawes, with his twin sister Hilda. He was the second youngest of a family of ten children to Richard and Mary Moore. In 1901 they were living at Mirkpot Farm on the Hawes-Ingleton road where Richard was a farmer and stonemason. By 1914 they were living at Catriggs Farm near Hawes. Harold enlisted in Leyburn in May 1918 joining the 9th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment. He arrived in France on October 11th, just one month from the Armistice and the cessation of hostilities. As Harold joined his Battalion, it had just come out of front line action in the Premont area between St. Quentin and Cambrai. A week later on the 24th October the Battalion was involved in capturing a machine gun post in a wooded area. During this action Harold, along with a number of other casualties, was severely wounded and later died. He had been in the war just 13 days. Private Harold Moore is buried in the Premont British Cemetery SE of Cambrai. He was just 20 years old.
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Wilfred Whitfield
Wilfred was born in March 1896 in Marske by the Sea near Redcar on the East coast. When he was young his family moved to Middlesbrough where his father worked in the steelworks. Wilfred was training as a draughtsman when war broke out. Wilfred was just 5’ 2’’ tall, an inch shorter that the regulation height. But due to the great manpower losses he eventually got his chance in early 1915 when recruitment standards were somewhat relaxed. He enlisted in the 4th Battalion. It was in November of 1916 in the latter stages of the Somme offensive that the work party that Wilfred had volunteered for came under fire. On his way back to his own lines he was caught by a shell explosion. He was taken to a hospital at Abbeville where his left arm was amputated. Back in England Wilfred had to adjust to life without a limb. He was classed as ‘incurably unemployable’ and found it impossible to get a job. He used his time to study employment law and became a ceaseless campaigner for better conditions of his fellow jobless war wounded. He would continue to do so even when after he eventually gained employment. He was instrumental in establishing one of the first branches of BLESMA (British Limbless Ex-Servicemen’s Association) in Teesside. He married Elsie and his daughter Sylvia was born in 1932. However, his fifty cigarettes a day habit for most of his life would take their toll. He died of lung cancer in…
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Edward Barker
Edward was the Great Uncle of Robert Raw and Margaret Hird, who visited the museum during one of our Ribbon of Remembrance drop-in days. Edward, born in Richmond (he lived for at time along Frenchgate and then at 3 Maison Dieu) worked as a plumber for the North Eastern Railway, and enlisted after the outbreak of war in York. He became a Private in the 17th (Service) Battalion (NER Pioneers), a group whose skills were vital in constructing and maintaining the railways that developed behind the lines which kept the troops equiped and fed for the duration of the war. Edward was killed on 2nd November 1917, during the period where the battalion were working on light railways in the Ypres sector and suffered from shrapnel and gas shelling as well as high-explosives. Edward Barker is buried in Bard Cottage Cemetery, Belgium.