The Barwick in Elmet Roll of Service for the Great War
The plaque bearing the dedication on the War Memorial in Barwick in Elmet states 'nearly one hundred joined His Majesty's Forces'. I have been working to compile a listing of as many of the 'nearly one hundred' as possible drawing on reports in local newspapers and official sources such as service records and pension documents. Local electoral registers have been a great help in this area of research, especially those published around the time the Great War ended, as they annotate those men who were absent and serving in the forces. From census returns it is relatively easy to highlight men who would have been of an age to have served during the Great War, but it is by no means straight forward to match these men to names which appear in the sources shown above.
Only where I have been able to positively identify that a man from Barwick was serving in the Armed Forces have I added him to the nominal roll being compiled for Barwick in Elmet. I have also added men who, though they didn't come from or live in the village, had some connection to it, for example, one or two of the men listed married women from the village, and the addition of those men, when taken with the others in this table, and those who died, takes the total number in this nominal roll to over one hundred. The names of the men so far identified are shown below.
Where possible, and where the identification is positive, I have included the military details for these men, and for those whose military details have yet to be added, work will continue to complete the picture of their service during the Great War.
As the work progresses, each man's name will become a link to a page giving further details of his service and his life.
Notes:
* Isaac Barker had been discharged from the Army, due to sickness, on 12th October 1918, and received a Silver War Badge. He died at Pannal Ash, near Harrogate, on 10th November 1918 from influenza and pneumonia. It has not been possible to discover the precise reason for his discharge from the Army, but if it were either, or both, of those illnesses that killed him, he would be entitled to War Graves Status. He is buried in Barwick's All Saints' Churchyard.
**William Woodhead was a repatriated former Prisoner of War. He had been wounded in the right underarm and left leg at the time of his capture on 12th September 1916. He died after discharge on 10th March 1921 after a roof -fall in Isabella Colliery in Garforth. He lies buried in Barwick in Elmet, All Saints' Churchyard.
607 Lance Corporal William Frederick Moody, 4th Machine Gun Battalion, late B Company, 16th Infantry Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, married a Barwick girl during the war and took her and her family back to Australia after the war. Their story is available here.