Bradford brothers who managed to survive The Somme
OF THE villages, towns and cities across the UK that were scarred by the horror of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, few places suffered more than Bradford. In the first hour of the offensive, 1,770 of the 2,000 men who made up the ‘Bradford Pals’ were killed or injured in the assault on German lines.
But despite the terrible toll of the battle and the wider war on the city, one group of Bradford brothers who had all been at the Somme - Percy, Gordon and Harry Monkman - all managed to survive the conflict which eventually claimed the lives of over 700,000 British soldiers.
Now the stories of their very different experiences in the war have been brought back to life through a new book by Percy’s grandson Martin Greenwood. Martin, whose book
was published earlier this year says the brothers came from humble beginnings as the sons of a street hawker who sold fruit and vegetables.
Harry volunteered in September 1914, with Gordon joining three months later. But Martin says his grandfather was more reluctant to sign up.
“My grandad was two years older and had the makings of a proper job, working as a clerk in a bank,” he says. “I think he had some pacifist tendencies but he joined in autumn 1915 in a noncombatant role.”
While Harry was sent home after suffering shell-shock following the Battle of the Somme, Gordon went on to become a commissioned officer and in 1918, he earned the Military Cross for leading his platoon against an enemy machine gun post compelling 100 German soldiers to surrender.
But it was Percy who had perhaps the most unusual wartime experience. He initially joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as a stretcher-bearer and like his brothers, was stationed at the Somme. But within weeks, Percy - who was an aspiring comedian and comic actor - was seconded into an entertainment troupe called ‘The Archies’ who worked just behind the frontline entertaining the soldiers each evening.
Martin explains: “For the rest of the war he was in this entertainment troupe doing characters and music in the evenings. That absolutely suited him to the ground. One of the issues in the war was sheer boredom. For ten per cent of the time, it was horror of fighting, but a lot of the time you were hanging around doing nothing. Boredom was a major problem on the frontline and the entertainment was set up to deal with that.
“They performed night after night and one skit in particular was performed more than 200 times that took the mickey out of the senior officers. That of course was very popular!”
After the war, Harry ended up as a successful businessman working in the wool trade, Gordon emigrated to Canada and went on to become a businessman and a city councillor, while Percy continued his work in the bank - but pursued a busy creative life in his time outside work.
Percy was childhood friends with the novelist J.B. Priestley but forged his own artistic reputation as a wellknown local painter of the Yorkshire Dales whose work was exhibited both in Yorkshire and London, while he regularly had cartoons published in
During the Second World War, he ran a musical group which toured around Yorkshire giving performances to injured and returning servicemen. Martin says watching
the new colour documentary about the First World War, has brought home how fortunate his family were. “When you think three people in your family were in the war and all survived, that is incredibly lucky really when you think of the numbers that didn’t return.”