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The Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment
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World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar greatThe Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment
The Duke of Wellington's Regiment (West Riding) can be traced back to 1702. Today it is part of the Yorkshire Regiment
Battalions during the Great War.
- 1st Battalion
- 2nd Battalion
- 3rd (Reserve) Battalion
- 4th Battalion
- 2/4th Battalion
- 3/4th Battalion
- 5th Battalion
- 2/5th Battalion
- 3/5th Battalion
- 6th Battalion
- 2/6th Battalion
- 3/6th Battalion
- 7th Battalion
- 2/7th Battalion
- 3/7th Battalion
- 8th (Service) Battalion
- 9th (Service) Battalion
- 10th (Service) Battalion
- 11th (Reserve) Battalion
- 12th (Labour) Battalion
- 13th (Service) Battalion
- 14th (Service) Battalion
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Dec 2011
Please note we currently have a large backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site.
Those known to have served with The Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment during the Great War.
Select a story link or scroll down to browse those stories hosted on this site.
- Gnr. Benjamin Auty Read their Story.
- Pte. Benjamin Bennett Read their Story.
- Captain Richard Bolton MC & Bar
- Pte. Nicholson Braddock (d.20th Sep 1917) Read their Story.
- Pte. Fred Brown (d.7th Jun 1917)
- Pte. Thomas Chadwick (d.27th Aug 1917) Read their Story.
- Cpl. George Henry Collins (d.10th Nov 1916) Read their Story.
- Pte. Percy Goddard (d.12th Jun 1916) Read their Story.
- Pte. F. Greenwood (d.7th Jun 1917)
- Pte. T. H. Hanson (d.7th Jun 1917)
- Pte. R. S. Howard (d.7th Jun 1917)
- Pte. Tom Close Naylor (d.7th Jun 1917)
- Ernest Rainsforth Read their Story.
- Pte. John Charles William Cumberland Shorrocks (d.18th Sep 1916) Read their Story.
- Pte. Alvin Smith (d.17th Sept 1916) Read their Story.
- Pte. L. Sykes (d.7th Jun 1917)
- Sjt. John William Wardman DCM, MM. Read their Story.
- Pte. Isaac Wells (d.7th Jun 1917)
If you have any names to add to this list, or any recollections or photos of those listed, please get in touch.
Ernest Rainsforth 2/5th Btn. West Riding Regt
My Grandfather - Ernest Rainsforth, was badly injured but also survived and was repatriated to England from France with his bicep blown off and with a serious knee injury from sharpnel: whilst fighting with the 2/5th West Riding Regiment as the Germans pulled back from the Hindenberg Line in March 1917. I am lucky enough to have my Grandad's war discharge papers - discharged as being medically unfit for further war service - and the original telegram sent to his Mother advising her that Ernest had been wounded and admitted to hospital in London. I ache with sheer anguish for her when I read that telegram and know what his Mum must have felt at the time. My Grandad survived the war: met my Nan at Malden Hospital in Middlesex where she was nursing during WW1 and returned to his home town of Gainsbro with a beautiful new wife. Ernest lived until the age of 94. He never chose to speak to anyone about his experiences in France except to say to my younger brother - when my brother was a boy - that he laid on a stretcher in a field at a Clearing Station - gagging for a drink of water for over 24 hours and when he called the orderly for water the orderly said "shut-up Rainsforth, the bloke laid next to you has 16 bullits in him ". Grandad unrolled his shirt sleeve and showed my brother a massive intentation in his left arm where his bicep had been literally blown off.
Pte. John Charles William Cumberland Shorrocks (d.18th Sep 1916)
John Shorrocks is remembered on the war memorial in the park at Marsden near Huddersfield, but is listed as Sharrocks.
Pte. Benjamin Bennett 2nd Btn. Durham Light Infantry
I believe at sometime my grandfather, Benjamin Bennett was a prisoner of war. This is a memory of a conversation with him over 40 years ago. He served with the 2nd Btn DLI and also with the West Riding Regiment.
Cpl. George Henry Collins 26th (Tynside Irish) Btn. Northumberland Fusiliers (d.10th Nov 1916)
I am looking for any information at all on my Great Uncle George Collins. There is a Supplementary Note that he was Formerly 18188 West Riding Regt from CWGC but I believe his records were lost in a fire. Any help will be greatly appreciated
Pte. Thomas Chadwick 8th Btn. Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment Regiment (d.27th Aug 1917)
Thomas Chadwick was born in the March quarter of 1892 in Mossley, Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, the son of Reuben and Bridget, brother to John, Adam, George Robert and Charles Henry.In 1901 at the age of 8 he was living at 8 Chapel Street, Mossley with his parents and in 1911 aged 19 he was a cotton piecer living on Chapel Street, Mossley with his parents. In 1913 a Thomas Chadwick married a Amy Hall, this may have been him.
Thomas was killed in action on the 27th of August 1917 and is commemorated on Panel 82 to 85 and 162A of the Tyne Cot Memorial. On Saturday 9th October 1920 the Mossley War Memorial was officially unveiled. Present at the ceremony the Mayor said “We are met here today to honour the brave and noble men who kept the enemy from our shores in the greatest war the world has ever known”. The "Last Post" was sounded, followed by a solemn silence, a hymn was sung, and then over 70 tributes were laid. The vicar gave a blessing and the National Anthem was sung. A wreath was laid in the memory of Thomas Chadwick. There are no names on this Memorial, but Thomas Chadwick is listed on the wooden Mossley War Memorial inside St George's Church, Mossley.
Sjt. John William Wardman DCM, MM. 10th Btn. Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment
As far as I know, my great-grandfather, John Wardman, served in the 10th Battalion, the West Riding Regiment. I have his service records, but like many surviving from ww1 they are quite faded and difficult to read. He was awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the Military Medal for bravery but I have only the London Gazette listings for these, as I have not yet been able to view the war diaries to find out more information.
Gnr. Benjamin Auty West Riding Regiment
Benjamin Auty joined up with the West Riding Regiment as Private 11377. He was sent to France on the 5th of December 1914 and later transferred to the Royal Garrison Artillery as Gunner 211575.
Pte. Alvin Smith 1/7th Btn Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment (d.17th Sept 1916)
From FOR A SHILLING A DAY (Bank House Books)Private Alvin Smith’s war. Lothersdale, North Yorkshire: This is where it began, in a village where the Smiths had farmed for generations. At Christmas 1915 Alvin Smith, the nineteen-year-old son of farmer Edmund and Sarah Jane Smith was walking with his girlfriend, Amy. The First World War had been raging for more than a year. Alvin’s brother, John (my grandfather), had joined up at the start, but Alvin had been needed to help run Burlington Farm. His dad insisted, it was an embarrassing position, as all the best chaps seemed to be in khaki. It would not take much to make Alvin defy his parents. At Christmas it came.
‘Would you love me if I was a soldier?’ Alvin joked as he walked with Amy.
‘Well,’ teased the pretty eighteen-year-old, in a reply that was to haunt her for the next eighty years, ‘I might respect you a bit more.’
Respect. That did it. Over Christmas dinner with friends and family, Alvin turned to his best pal, Willie Smith, and said, ‘We’d better enjoy this Christmas, Willie, because we probably won’t see the next one.’
‘There was nothing dramatic about the way he said it,’ Amy told me many years later. ‘It was just a statement of fact.’
Alvin and Willie enlisted together on 29 January 1916, as privates in the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (West Riding). They were innocents in arms, rushed over to France after a frantic few weeks of training to take part in the long-awaited British offensive, which was already being called The Big Push. Soon it would be known by a name that became a byword for slaughter: the Somme.
Thiepval, the Somme: This is where it ended, a placid corner of northern France where the autumn sun blazes down on dry, new-ploughed fields and the potato harvest is piled in tons beside the farm tracks. The scars of the 1916 trenches can still be seen and every year’s ploughing uncovers the ‘iron harvest’ of unexploded shells. A few years ago, walking the route that Private Alvin Smith and his pals followed, I found something white sticking out of the earth bank of a sunken track. As I pulled it, eighteen inches of human thigh bone emerged, a reminder of the carnage on these gentle chalk slopes. In 1916 the Germans held the high ground here, commanding every hill-top and valley slope. The village of Thiepval and the 1,000-yard-long Thiepval Spur, which stuck like a giant finger into the British lines, were bristling with concrete gun emplacements, trenches and deep dugouts, all screened behind vast hedges of barbed wire. Alvin’s battalion, the 1st/7th, was in reserve on the terrible first day of the Somme on 1 July 1916, and was spared the horror that left 20,000 young Britons dead and 40,000 wounded. Alvin’s friend, Willie Smith, was reported killed on 7 July.
The division got its first blooding in an attack on 3 September. It failed wretchedly. The British commander-in-chief, General Sir Douglas Haig, was furious. He wrote scathingly in his diary, ‘The total losses of this division are less than 1,000!’ In the grim arithmetic of the Somme, where every yard was measured in deaths, the West Riding lads were not dying quickly enough. To infuriate the top brass further, some of the division’s troops had failed to salute a visiting general, which probably explains the terse entry in the 1st/7th Battalion’s diary for 8 September: ‘Games before breakfast followed by saluting drill.’ On 15 September another Yorkshire battalion seized German trenches south of Thiepval. Three companies of Alvin’s battalion, about 700 men, moved forward that night to take over the trenches and prepare for another attack.
It began, disastrously, at 6pm on Sunday 17 September with a terrible misjudgement. The battalion’s mortars got the range wrong and hit their own trenches, exploding a store of hand grenades. Amid the dead and wounded and the confusion of this ‘friendly fire’ incident, Captain Lupton calmly climbed on to the trench parapet and heroically rallied the men.
The attack was all over in an hour. It was such a success that a general visited the battalion two days later to offer his congratulations. The West Riding lads had advanced 350 yards beyond their objective. In doing so they lost 220 men. The arithmetic of the Somme was working.
They never found Alvin’s body. During a lull in the fighting one of his mates went back for water. When he returned the captured trench had been found by German guns and the occupants blown to shreds.
The name of Private Alvin Smith is recorded on the Thiepval Memorial to those who died on the Somme and who have no known grave. There are 73,000 names. A few days after his death, the local newspaper in Yorkshire recorded: ‘He was well known in the village and district and was highly esteemed by all who knew him. He was a well-built youth, of a pleasant and cheerful disposition.’
Pte. Percy Goddard 1/7th Battalion Duke of Wellington West Riding Regiment (d.12th Jun 1916)
I know little about my great grandfather, Percy Goddard except that he settled in Swansea and worked on the railways, but having read about the horror of the war I would like his contribution to be recorded.
Pte. Nicholson Braddock 10th Battalion Duke of Wellingtons (West Rding Regiment) (d.20th Sep 1917)
My Great Uncle, the youngest of 3 Braddock Brothers all killed within a year of each other (incl my G-Grandad Nicholas William Braddock) in different regiments on the western front. I have his service records which, unlike his brothers, were not destroyed by damage to the National Archives.Apart from a big KIA scribbled across the top of them, they hold clues to a great little wartime story which I simply love, although the ending is not the best... Nicholson was detained for a period of 7 days, unpaid,for 'scrumping' the act of taking apples from an orchard without permission (a bit harsh considering the circumstances) however, he was eventually released..... on the 19 Sep 1917, just in time for the operations and his unfortuante death. But as a 5'2" soldier and a very young man (19), I just love it, the "cheeky little sod" as would be said in the North but a hero to me.
Recomended Reading.
Available at discounted prices.
C.D. Bruce
The first two chapters in the book provide an historical outline of the raising of the 1st Battalion in 1702 and take its story through to 1923. The book recounts story of the 2nd Battalion on the Western Front, mainly by use of quotations from eyewitness accounts, letters, diaries and official documents supported by good maps. A good feature of this history is the recording by name of officers joining the battalion or leaving or becoming casualties, and the arrival of drafts with strengths.More information on:
History of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, 1st and 2nd Battalions 1881-1923
BENEATH HILL 60 tells the extraordinary true story of Oliver Woodward, the legendary Australian metal scientist. In 1916, Woodward faced the most difficult decision, ultimately having to separate from his new young love for the deadly carnage of the Western Front. On treacherous territory, behind the German enemy lines, Woodward and his secret platoon of Australian tunnelers face a suicidal battle to defend a leaking, tunnel system. A tunnel packed with enough high explosives to change the course of the War.More information on:
Beneath Hill 60 [DVD]
Nigel Cave
The shell-ravaged landscape of Hill 60, some three miles south east of Ypres, conceals a labyrinth of tu nnels and underground workings. This book offers a guide to the memorials, cemeteries and museums at the site 'More information on:
Hill 60: Ypres (Battleground Europe)
Will Davies
'Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one - fire! Down goes the firing switch. At first, nothing. Then from deep down there comes a low rumble, and it as if the world is spliting apart...' On 7th June 1917, nineteen massive mines exploded beneath Messines Ridge near Ypres. The largest man-made explosion in history up until that point shattered the landscape and smashed open the German lines. Ten thousand German soldiers died. Two of the mines - at Hill 60 and the Caterpillar - were fired by men of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, comprising miners and engineers rather than parade-ground soldiers. Drawing on the diaries of one of the key combatants, "Benealth Hill 60" tells the little-known, devastatingly brutal true story of this subterranean war waged beneath the Western Front - a stygian battle-ground where men drowned in viscous chalk, suffocated in the blue gray clay, choked on poisonous air or died in the darkness, caught up up in vicious hand-to-hanMore information on:
Beneath Hill 60 [Paperback]
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