VISITING THE LEEDS PALS

By Brian Sanderson,

On  Friday morning I went  with my sister to Colsterdale which is about six miles from Masham.Of the main road is a sign for The Leeds Pals memorial which is a stone cairn put in place in 1935.

The Leeds Pals were army brigade made up of people  enlisting from Leeds in 1914.Among those people were Major William Booth , Roy Kiner,Abe Waddington , Arthur Dolphin and my grandfarther.At Colsterdale they practise going to war in France and lived in a tented village with some huts.There is still some brickwork were the huts were and at the bottom of the lane was a chaple which is now boarded up.

On the 21 May 1915 they marched from Ripon to Leeds as part of propaganda to recruit more soldiers.  Then they played a cricket match at Headingley on 22 May   against Yorkshire which the Pals won. Booth taikng five for fifty-one and scoring thirty-one runs. There is a picture in The Leeds Pals book with the soldiers eating in the Rugby ground.

Booth became a second -lieutenant in the brigade.He deid on the first day of The Somme in 1916 in the arms of Abe Waddington but his body was not identified until March 1917 ,by a M.C.C. cigarette case in his pocket.He is buried in Serre Road No 1 Cemetery.He was killed by a shell exploding which caused Roy Kilner to be wounded.Booth had been the best man at Kilner,s wedding and the latter named his son after him.There 900 men in the Leeds Pals and 750 deid on the gentle stroll into the German lines.Please look at the excellent Leeds Pals web-site about these brave men.

My grand-father survived and went back to fight at Passchendaele were the causuaites numbered nearly 400,000.during that offensive.He survived the War to end all Wars and worked for theYorkshire Post.
I live in his house now so it was a visit to Colsterdale that I had to make.