Gathered
who served with the Northumberland Fusiliers. Born in 1895, John lived in Gosforth with his parents and six siblings. He was 20 when he was commissioned, and saw action at the Battle of the Somme 1916, where he was injured.
The following year John was made a signalling and intelligence officer and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in 1917, near Croisilles in France. He was killed in action in October 1917 aged 22.
Volunteers also researched Ruth Nicholson, a Newcastle University medical graduate who offered her services as a surgeon to the War Feggetter John Hakifax in Office but was rejected for being a woman. Undeterred, she joined Dr Elsie Inglis of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, and helped to set up a military hospital under the French Red Cross in an abandoned abbey at Royaumont, 20 miles north of Paris. Staffed entirely by women, Royaumont was the largest continuously-operating voluntary hospital in France and had treated more than 10,000 patients by the end of the war. Universities at War has also included a schools outreach programme, exhibitions, community group partnerships, a student-led documentary project and an oral history project. Ruth Sheret, Newcastle University archivist, said: “One of the main aims of this project was to make the research as accessible as possible to schools, community groups, history groups and members of the public so that the stories gathered will not be lost. “Although we’ve been able to fill in a lot of the gaps, there is still more work to be done. Anyone who has any information about a person who worked or studied at Armstrong College at the time of the First World War should get in touch and help us ensure that the fallen are more than just names on a memorial.”
■ Visit http://www.universitiesatwar.org.uk to explore the data