Lives and deaths of

ALMOST a century after the mighty guns fell silent on the Western Front, the lives and deaths of Yorkshire soldiers will be remembered through the work of a Huddersfield-born artist.

John Hodgson Lobley’s “Fray Bentos” painting – so called because it depicts British Tommies eating bully beef – has adorned a balcony in Huddersfield Drill Hall for many years.

An authentic and unvarnished portrait of the daily lives of troops in the trenches, it was one of scores of paintings created by Hodgson, who earned a reputation as one of the conflict’s premier war artists.

The Huddersfield painting features six soldiers huddled in a trench and dug-out preparing food, eating, sleeping, whittling wood, cleaning away mud and looking out through a periscope into no man’s land.

It complements the drill hall’s roll of honour, which occupies a prime space within the building and carries the names of officers and men of the 5th Battalion the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (West Riding) who died during the Great War.

The memorial boards have recently been renovated and regilded with gold leaf.

In advance of Remembrance Parade on November 11 at Greenhead Park, the memorial boards are to be re-dedicated on Sunday, November 4, with John Hodgson Lobley’s painting of a WWI trench scene, known as the Fray Bentos painting, on display at Huddersfield Drill Hall. Trustee of the drill hall, Captain (retd) Ian Fillan (left) and Captain Chris Hosty in front of the painting with Local Democracy Reporter Tony Earnshaw (DWR), said: “There is a permanent memorial on our wall to what happened to the troops who marched out of this drill hall in 1914 and didn’t come back.

“All their names were inscribed on the honours boards at war’s end. That links very closely with the Lobley painting being an important piece of war art.”

The re-dedication, which is open to the public, will give people a rare chance to see Hodgson’s painting, which, at 3m in length, has not been included in exhibitions commemorating WWI due to its sheer size.

The son of a wool merchant, John Hodgson Lobley was born in Hud-