By Contestant No 7
June 16 2007

He rose to arms unbidden, unneeded, overbold; his face in earth is hidden, his heart in earth is cold…… Oh, tears of human passion blur not the image true; this was not folly’s fashion, this was the man we knew. So wrote Sir Henry Newbolt, the author of patriotic verse, who also coined the phrase, play up, play up and play the game, forever associated with our game.

Sir Stanley Jackson was one of the first Yorkshire cricketers to represent England on the battlefield and the cricket field, serving in the Boer war.

In 1914 he was one of the supporters of the formation of the Leeds Pals, properly known as the 15^th (Service) Battalion (1^st Leeds), the West Yorkshire Regiment.

Among the earliest of the volunteers for the Leeds Pals were Major Booth, Roy Kilner and Arthur Dolphin. Major Booth had won two England caps the previous winter on the MCC tour to South Africa and was a Wisden cricketer of the year in 1914. He had formed a formidable partnership opening the Yorkshire bowling with Alonzo Drake. When the Great War began in August, 1914, Yorkshire were playing Sussex, at Brighton, and Booth, Kilner and Dolphin had resolved to join up as soon as they got back to Yorkshire. They became Sergeant Booth, Private (later Lance-Corporal) Kilner and Private Dolphin. 

Twice Alonzo Drake tried to volunteer, but was refused on medical grounds. He died in 1919 of a heart attack.Shortly before the Battalion left England for overseas service in the Canal Zone at the end of 1915, Booth was promoted to Second Lieutenant.

The Pals saw little action in Egypt, but, in March 1916, they were sent to the Western Front, to take part, with many other Kitchener New Army Battalions, in the Somme offensive.

 

On the 1^st July, 1916, the first day of the battle, the Pals held part of the front line to the west of Serre, the most northerly section of battlefield, where they faced the German 169^th Regiment, also known as the 8^th Baden Regiment, who were defending very strongly fortified positions, Serre being a vital part of the German line. The Germans knew the Pals were going to attack that morning because they could see the gaps in the British wire and the white tape marking the forming up positions in front of the British line.

As the British eight day barrage reached a crescendo before dawn, the Germans released their own barrage on the British assembly trenches. Just before ‘zero hour’ the British barrage lifted to the German second line, so the Germans in their front line positions were able to man their trenches and bring up their machine guns, while German shells rained down on the Pals. The 169^th were supported by the machine guns of the 66^th Regiment, firing from the north.

The German machine gunners, with thumbs swollen from pressing the fire button and fingers burnt from changing red hot gun barrels, were to pour thousands of rounds into the attackers. Desperate to cool their guns and with their water gone, crews urinated into water cans, to provide coolant to keep the guns firing.

 

Before the attack began, Corporal Kilner was wounded in the barrage and was sent back to an aid post, as Pals huddled in their jumping off trenches waiting the command to attack.

 

At 07.30 whistles were sounded and the Leeds Pals and the rest of the forward battalions of the British Army went ‘over the top’, Lt. Booth leading his platoon into ‘no man’s land’.

Strict orders had been given that nobody was to stop to help wounded comrades. Lt Booth saw a man who had stopped for that purpose. Pausing, he told the soldier he must go forward and they did so together.

Almost immediately Lt Booth was hit in the shoulder and fell, dying, the shrapnel having been said to have touched his heart.

All of the thirteen British battalions of the 31^st Division that attacked Serre on the 1^st July were volunteer ‘New Army’ units, eleven of them Yorkshire Battalions. The British Army suffered over fifty seven thousand casualties on that first day of the Somme offensive, over nineteen thousand of them killed.

Serre was not taken.

 

Every Leeds Pals officer who went forward was killed or wounded. One of the dead was Lt Evelyn Lintott, the Leeds and England footballer. The total casualties for the Pals are unknown, but were probably about 680 out of the approximately 750 who went ‘over the top’. The Pals were relieved on the 5^th July, when fewer than 50 of the attackers marched out.

 

Abe Waddington, who began his Yorkshire career in 1919, also fought at Serre with the Bradford Pals, being wounded a little to the north of the area attacked by the Leeds Pals.

 

The official casualty figures that are reported as representing the percentage of killed, wounded and missing are seldom accurate, because they are based on the men available for duty, and include the cadre of men left behind when a major attack takes place and upon which the battalion can be reformed in the event of high casualties. So the real percentage loss of Pals who were in the attack was probably about ninety per cent.

 

About 150 Pals formed that cadre, among them Arthur Dolphin, who survived the war and went on to win an England cap against Australia in 1921. Arthur played for Yorkshire until 1927.

 

Roy Kilner was evacuated to England, recovered from his wound and continued to play for Yorkshire after the war, winning test nine caps. He died in 1928 of enteric fever, contracted in India, at the young age of 37. Roy had a benefit in 1925, receiving a record £4,106, possibly still a record in real terms.

Major Booth‘s body was not recovered until February, 1917. He was identified by the cigarette case, which had been presented to him by the MCC to commemorate his participation in their tour of 1913/4 to South Africa. It is well known that his sister refused to accept her brother’s death, keeping a light burning in the window of his room in their Pudsey home until her death in 1950.Lt Booth was buried in Serre Road No. 1 CWGC cemetery…. but his name lived on. Roy Kilner named his son Major. Yorkshire were again playing at Sussex when World War 2 began. Many of that great Yorkshire team of the ‘30s joined up, as did other Yorkshire cricketers.

Captain, later Major, Sutcliffe was an RAOC reservist and was joined in the forces by, amongst others, Len Hutton, Maurice Leyland, Arthur Wood, Frank Smailes, Paul Gibb, Brian Sellers, Cyril Turner, Ellis Robinson, George Macaulay and Norman Yardley, who served in the Green Howards.

 Also in the Green Howards was Hedley Verity, who had intended to enlist in the same unit with his great pal, Bill Bowes. Initially, they were in a searchlight unit, before going for officer selection. Bowes, though, was deemed medically unfit for the Infantry and joined the Artillery. After they had been to the recruiting office, but before receiving their uniforms, Bill and Hedley were walking together and were recognised as Yorkshire and England cricketers by a man who berated them, telling them that if they were good enough to play for England they were good enough to fight for England. With dignity, they didn’t enlighten the man that they had already volunteered.

Hedley Verity had foreseen the coming war and had studied infantry tactics in anticipation of service.

 Commissioned as a captain, he led B Company, 1^st Battalion the Green Howards forward in a night attack against a strongly defended German position at Catania, Sicily, on the 19/20^th July 1943.  

The attack stalled and Captain Verity was severely wounded in the chest. A party was sent out from the British lines in the early morning to bring him in, but the Germans had beaten the Howards to him.

 

Captain Verity was well cared for by his captors, treated in hospital and then moved to an Italian Hospital at Caserta, on the mainland, but Captain Verity died on the 31^st July, 1943.

Bill Bowes was probably the first Yorkshire cricketer to learn of his friend’s death, because he was a prisoner in an Italian POW camp also in southern Italy, having been taken prisoner at Tobruk, in the North African campaign. Bill learnt the news of Headley’s death from two Canadian prisoners who had been transferred to his POW camp at Chieti.Captain Verity is buried at the CWGC cemetery at Caserta. Writing after the war, Bill Bowes recounted the incident in which he and Hedley were effectively called cowards, commenting that if the man who had made those remarks were reading his words, he would now know that Hedley was not only good enough to play for England and to fight for England, but that Hedley was also good enough to die for England.                                      ………………ooo000ooo………………