Young footballers cut down

Among these bright young footballers from the Langton Boys’ School photographed in 1911 is its head boy Hubert Davis.

Pictured top row, third from the left, he was also the school’s cricket captain.

Yet just five years later, he was among the thousands to perish on the very first day of the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916.

Pictured with Hubert are Eric Sharp (centre with the ball) and C.J. Silsby, (bottom row, second from the right) who would both later die, as did William Burgess (bottom left). The Somme also claimed Willie Lott and F Wakefield, along with teacher Leonard Lindley, who was among the hundreds of soldiers’ bodies never found and is remembered at the Thiepval memorial.

The school bore a heavy toll of losses in the Great War among former pupils, many who had barely left the classroom when they volunteered for the front line. Of the 400 boys who went to the Langton from its most recent inception in 1881, around 100 of them died in the Great War.

Four of the school houses are now named after former pupils who fell – Burgess, Hardman, Mackenzie and Sharp. Head of school Ken Moffat said: “There is no attempt in the house system to glorify warfare. Rather, by permanently remembering these boys, there is an opportunity to reflect on the tragedy of the loss of life brought about by warfare.

“Indeed, we feel profoundly that we do not have the right to forget their lives and the tragic ends to which they came. They bore the weight of their time too heavily.

“The four boys represented much that we value in the school. All were bright and Archie Hardman, who was also a head boy, is said to have been a boy of extraordinary