Information submitted by Lynne Pengelly.
Thomas William Tidyman known as Bill (although this may have only been after he moved to Bradford)
Born 1st November 1896 in Norton, Stockton on Tees the 2nd child, eldest son of John and Mary Tidyman
The 1911 census shows him living and working on a farm in Agglethorpe (possibly Brecongill) with his parents and 6 siblings, his older sister is listed as a diarymaid.
He enlisted on 24th May 1918 at the age of 23 into the 9th battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment and was wounded by a gunshot in his right forearm sometime in September 1918, he was transferred to the Bangour War hospital in Edinburgh and was discharged on 19th June 1919.
Carl at the Green Howard’s museum was able to tell me that my grandad had been a marksman when he saw the badge on his uniform and also explained about the silver war badge given to injured men to wear after they had been discharged as unfit for further war service.
After the war he returned to the farm his father died in 1920 and his mother died in 1927, at sometime he met my grandma who was visiting some friends who had relocated to Coverdale and they were married in Bradford on 7th December 1929.
He was a tenant farmer at Harrop Edge Farm in Allerton Bradford until 1942 and then the family moved to Allerton village and he had a milk round. He worked for the War Ag during World War 2.
He had several other less manual jobs until his retirement in 1961 and died aged 81 in 1979.
Explore more memories from the ribbon
-
Richard Oliver
Richard Oliver was 22 years old when he enlisted at Cramlington in September 1914. He was from Esh Winning, Crook, Co. Durham and was a miner. He enlisted in the Northumberland Fusiliers but was posted to the Yorkshire Regiment. He served in the 9th and 10th Battalions and whilst with the 10th Battalion in 1915 he was awarded the Military Medal. He served in France and Italy and became disabled due to the effects of gassing. He was discharged in March 1920 and was initially given a pension of 8 shillings a week, but this was subsequently withdrawn and his appeal rejected. He left the army as a Corporal, he served in France from 1915 to 1917 and on the Italian Front from November 1917 until December 1918.
-
Oliver H Ball
Photograph discovered in the archives of the Green Howards Museum by Stuart Hodgson, with information from Nottinghamshire County Council’s website. Second Lieutenant Oliver Ball was born in 1891 in Daybrook, Nottinghamshire. Both he and his brother, Walter were to die serving with the 10th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, which must have been a huge blow to his parents Alfred and Emma. After attending school in Nottingham where he joined the OTC, Oliver was employed at the Nottingham head office of the Union of London and Smith’s Bank. On 28th September 1916 the 10th Battalion were in the trenches near Fricourt consolidating the ground they had recently gained. German shells fell on the positions on a continuous basis. At about 8pm the shelling became much heavier ont the front line positions and as a result 2nd Lieut Oliver Ball was killed by shrapnel. He is buried at Guards’ Cemetery, Lesboeufs.
-
Bert Brocklesby
Bert Brocklesby, a school teacher from Doncaster, applied for exemption from military service early in 1916 on religious grounds. Bert went before his local and appeal Tribunals in February and April 1916, and was given exemption from Combatant Service Only by both. To Bert, this was an unacceptable decision – joining the Army, even in a Non-Combatant role meant going against his deeply held conscientious belief that war in all forms was a crime. He was arrested as an absentee after refusing to obey the order to report to his nearby barracks to be enlisted into the Non Combatant Corps. Bert refused to compromise his principles in any way, and did not even take the step of signing his Army papers – denying the military authorities even this rudimentary control over his life. For making this stand, and for disobeying other orders, Bert was Court Martialled and would soon become one of a group of Absolutists (known as the ‘Richmond 16’) sent to France from Richmond Castle, Yorkshire, as military prisoners. It seems that Bert managed to drop a cleverly edited field service postcard out of the train while being transferred to France for further punishment. This postcard alerted Bert’s local MP (who sympathised with the principles behind Bert’s objection to military service) that men were being transferred to the combat zone, where, considered to be on active service, they could be sentenced to death for disobeying orders. Bert would find this out on arrival at Henriville Camp, Northern France….