My name is Nigel Marshall. I am originally from Scholes but I now live in a rural village on the egde of the Somme Battlefields, in Northern France where I work as a military historian and battlefield guide.
I have had a lifelong interest in the Great War, and the
people who served in it. My main area of interest centres around the
Territorial Force Battalions of the West Yorkshire Regiment, and the formations
they fought with, and that interest, for the last thirty years, led to me
returning time and time again to the battlefields and back areas of France and
Belgium with which those men would have been so familiar.
My Grandfather, Frederick Louis Kilkenny served with the Leeds Rifles throughout the war, on the Western Front in France and Belgium and at home stations in Staffordshire and Ireland. I too wore the cap badge of the Leeds Rifles during my time as an Army Cadet. Lou Kilkenny’s brother, Andrew Kilkenny, or Syd as he was known to the family, was in the Royal Engineers Signal Service, and served with the Northern Cable Company, a Leeds based Territorial Force unit, during the Great War and he served in Egypt and Palestine. Andrew died at Alexandria in Egypt on 22 November 1918. He is buried in Cairo War Memorial Cemetery. These men, with others, have been a constant source of inspiration to find out more about what that war was like, for them, and for others.
