Article - A tale of amazing bravery from one of Doncaster’s finest heroes

IF I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.

The words of the famous Rupert Brooke war poem could have been penned specifically for Corporal John William Harper.

Of course, the harrowing reality is that he was just one of thousands of gallant British soldiers whose final, tragic moments were played out on World War II battlefields across Western Europe.

But Cpl Harper’s story is one that lives on, thanks to a dedicated team intent on keeping his memory alive.

Over the coming days, Hatfield Colliery Band, members of Hatfield Town Council and family relative Gordon Harper will visit the compact, rural town of Merksplas in Belgium, a stone’s throw from the border with the Netherlands for a series of remembrance events.

For it was near here on September 29, 1944 that the married, Hatfield born and bred peat worker, was fatally gunned down by German soldiers as the trench warfare of World War Two raged across Europe.

He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry that can be awarded to British forces and remains the only Doncaster-born soldier in the medal’s 155 year history to pick up the honour.

Gordon said: “John’s story is an amazing one, one that should be preserved and told to future generations. Acts of bravery like his should not go unnoticed and forgotten and that’s why we are keeping his memory alive.”

The story begins nearly 100 years ago with John’s birth in the then small and mostly agricultural village of Hatfield Woodhouse. From his home in Slay Pits Lane, young John and his father George worked the land as peat cutters on the fertile fields in and around the village.

He married a local girl, Lily, and the pair moved to a house in Thorne. But the couple’s lives were to change with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and in April 1940, John, like thousands of others, was enlisted into the war effort as the menace of Nazi Germany spread rapidly across mainland Europe.

Signed up to the York and Lancaster Regiment, Cpl Harper’s finest hour, but sadly tragic final moments, came in 1944 as the battle to liberate Belgium and Holland entered its final bloody stages and the platoon under his command battled to seize the Depot de Mendicitie near Antwerp from enemy hands.

In a handwritten memoir passed to the family, Geoff Cooper, a former comrade of Cpl Harper takes up the story: “At about 4am on the day of the attack, we left the copse and advanced about a mile towards the depot.

“After climbing over a fence, we were told to fix bayonets and at the order, charge. We had to gallop over this open area, about three hundred yards or so to the moat bank where, unbeknown to us Germans were dug in. We flattened ourselves with Cpl Harper at the helm.

“He motioned to us to be quiet - you could see the Jerry helmets. But thinking it may be part of the Polish Armoured Division, he called across, heard the name Fritz and that’s where the main attack began.”

Under a hail of grenades and gunfire, Cpl Harper rampaged through the German troops, taking prisoners, shooting the enemy and seizing their dugouts in a violent and fearsome firefight.

“Cpl Harper went to investigate, bringing another prisoner. Then he went a second time with our section’s left over grenades and took out a machine gun nest, allowing our supporting back-up to move through.

“But unfortunately he was killed while returning to us, his section. He was kind, thoughtful and considered us 18-year-olds as if we were his siblings.”

In the days that followed, the area, including the nearby town of Merksplas fell to the Allies, largely thanks to Cpl Harper’s selfless courage - and so began another chapter in the story.

The soldier was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his valour and buried at the nearby Leopoldsburg war cemetery - and then the story of his bravery remained untouched for another quarter of a century - until a chance discovery by Gordon unearthed the tale once again.

For one morning in 1968, while himself stationed in the military in Libya, Gordon was idly leafing through a copy of The Victor comic and became fascinated by the story on the front page - The Stubborn Tyke - which told Cpl Harper’s story in stirring comic book fashion.

And when Gordon recounted the story to his family, he was amazed to find that Cpl Harper was actually his dad’s cousin.

“No one had ever mentioned it,” he said. “But the whole amazing story came out. I was fascinated.”

Since then, Gordon has set about helping to keep the story of his brave relative alive and was instrumental, along with members of Hatfield Town Council, in establishing a permanent memorial in Hatfield Woodhouse cemetery while his medal is now on show at the Y&L Regiment Museum in Rotherham.

A memorial has also been erected in Merksplas and over the next few days, members of Hatfield Colliery Band will mark Cpl Harper’s life with a series of remembrance concerts and services in the Belgian town, now officially twinned with Hatfield.

“He is treated like a real hero over there,” added Gordon. “Children are taught about John and what he did - they have a real reverence for him.”

“We have built up strong links with Merksplas to organise cultural exchanges such as this one,” he added. “John’s sister Joan is still alive and she is extremely proud of her brother.

“She told me that he was a very humble man who would rather walk away from confrontation rather than get involved. It is hard to believe that he had that in him to do what he did. His is a truly remarkable story.”

And at the going down of the sun in a small corner of Belgium this weekend, the courageous deeds of one man will be well and truly remembered.

From: http://www.thornegazette.co.uk/news/local-news/a_tale_of_amazing_bravery_from_one_of_doncaster_s_finest_heroes_1_3966998

Article - Bentley folk’s true grit in face of Hitler bombs (Doncaster)

Our recent story which featured the bombing of Doncaster during World War II resulted in a number of replies reminding me of Bentley’s ordeal.

In fact that attack took place on December 21, 1940, the year before Balby suffered. The destruction at Bentley centred on the Royston Avenue area but a bomb also fell close to The Sun Inn blowing in the windows and injuring a young man standing at the bar as well as nearby pedestrians.

One gentleman who distinguished himself during the incident was miner Charles Allmand.

Mr Allmand was an ARP Warden on duty that night as residents were hurriedly taken to St Peter’s Church hall for shelter. He rescued several people during the raid, including an elderly lady who became trapped in her chair with her dog (which had been killed) still on her knees.

This brave indivdual lifted and propped up the piece of wood which had trapped the lady. He went on to help a mother and two children who were trapped in their makeshift bomb shelter under the stairs. They had to wait to be rescued by the heroic Mr Allmand.

There were many examples of bravery that night as neighbours and friends all struggled to help each other but Charles Allmand’s feats earned him official recognition from the Government which awarded him The British Empire Medal For Bravery by the Civil Defence Office. With regular rescue services stretched to capacity there was much sterling work done by volunteer members of the fire brigade and medical profession who also put their lives at risk attending to the residents.

There were several deaths and and many injured during this raid but with reporting restrictions in place at that time the local Doncaster Gazette newspaper’s headlines read “Families Buried in Their Homes, Many Left Homeless by Nazi Raiders. Women and Children Among The Victims”.

I received a letter from Bentley resident Fay Mackintosh who told me her aunt, uncle and cousin were all killed in the Royston Avenue raid and their names along with other victims are now on a memorial plaque in Arksey Cemetery.

Fay also remembers her mother was injured when the Sun Inn bomb exploded, which resulted in her losing her leg. Thankfully Fay and her father, who were close by, were uninjured.

Papers weren’t of course allowed to give casuality figures or to say where it all happened, having to describe Bentley quite simply as “an industrial village in the North” so no crumb of satisfaction should be gleaned by the enemy. True facts and figures weren’t released until much later.

One lady remembers that the family house was damaged but not demolished and it took nearly a year to make it habitable again during which time they stayed with neighbours and even managed to salvage their un-opened Christmas presents for some welcome cheer.

Smaller bombing incidents in the Long Sandall and Hyde Park areas took place, but the ferocity of the attacks increased again in 1941 with the Balby Blitz.

I would like to thank all the people who contacted me regarding this subject; there were some amazing, and poignant stories but Bentley folk were made of sterner stuff, they took it on the chin and came out fighting in true British fashion.

From: http://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/community/nostalgia/bentley_folk_s_true_grit_in_face_of_hitler_bombs_1_3289372

Doncaster,Bentley

News - Women of Steel will get lasting memorial (Sheffield)

COUNCIL bosses have allocated funding towards a permanent memorial for Sheffield’s Women of Steel, after a successful campaign by The Star.

Despite funding squeezes, councillors say they have found £28,000 from efficiency savings to pay for a monument in Barker’s Pool.

They are now asking businesses to donate funds to make up the estimated £150,000 total cost of the memorial.

The announcement follows a long Star campaign to win recognition for the hundreds of women who braved Nazi bombing raids to keep the city’s steelworks going during World War Two.

As part of the campaign, last year the women received thanks from former Prime Minister Gordon Brown during a visit to Downing Street, as the Government finally officially recognised their contribution to the war effort.

Kathleen Roberts, Kit Sollitt, Dorothy Slingsby and Ruby Gascoigne, each aged between 87 and 90, were received at Number 10 after working with The Star to give the campaign momentum. The whole campaign was triggered after Kathleen contacted The Star and it met a fantastic response, with hundreds of women calling in to tell of their wartime experiences.

Now Sheffield Council has decided there will be a permanent, lasting monument to their heroic work.

Paul Scriven, Liberal Democrat leader of the council, said: “I’m delighted that through making efficiency savings in-year, we’ve been able to locate these funds for this vital project. We’re confident that the commitment we’ve made will encourage donors to come forward.”

Originally four ideas were proposed for the monument, including an abstract, contemporary sculpture at the top of Howard Street, commemorative plaques as part of the seating on Howard Street, and a garden of remembrance.

But after consultation with the former foundry workers, it was decided a memorial in Barker’s Pool would be the best way of marking the women’s efforts.

Designs have yet to be finalised, but the council has launched a fundraising drive to get the cash together, and hope their initial pot of £28,000 will soon swell to the total amount.

Coun Scriven said: “These women made great sacrifices for the war effort and it’s important that, as a city, we recognise their contribution.”

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/lifestyle/the-star-says/women_of_steel_will_get_lasting_memorial_1_3301128

 

Article - Freedom fighters in war on Fascism (South Yorkshire and the Spanish Civil War)

It was a conflict being fought hundreds of miles away by men whose language he did not speak in a country he’d never been to before.

Yet in February 1937 Sam Wild, a young steel erector who lived much of his life in Totley, Sheffield, lay riddled with four machine gun bullets on the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War.

He was, it turned out, one of the lucky ones.

While more than half of the 600 Brits fighting against the Fascists in the infamous Battle of Jarama perished, Sam was dragged to safety.

In a makeshift Spanish hospital doctors managed to remove the bullets, patched him up and told him he should go home.

He refused. The cause, he said simply, was too important.

By May, just three months later, he was once more in the trenches of this strange land.

It is 75 years this summer since the start of the Spanish Civil War, and 75 years too since thousands of young men from across the world voluntarily risked their lives to go and fight the rising Fascist forces.

Among them were at least 26 South Yorkshire lads.

Little is known about them as a collective – other than that nine would perish out there – but this summer they will all be honoured at a special exhibition being held in Sheffield to mark the anniversary.

Among those whose stories will be told are Tommy James, who would later become a Freeman of Rotherham, Joe Albaya, whose Spanish father owned a sweet shop in Sheffield, and, of course, Sam Wild.

“They were all freedom-fighters,” says Mike Wild, of Kestrel Green, Sheffield, son of Sam, who passed away in 1983.

“These young men went over there because what was happening in Spain, and to the Spanish people, was wrong. Their democratically-elected government was being overthrown.

“The British government didn’t ask them to go – in fact the UK was part of a non-intervention agreement which made it illegal – but they did it anyway.”

It was a dark time in Europe.

Hitler’s Nazis were in power in Germany, Mussolini’s Fascists controlled Italy, and in the UK Oswald Mosley’s British Union Of Fascists were whipping up hatred on the streets, as proven when a 1934 rally at Sheffield’s City Hall descended into violence.

On the opposite side of the political spectrum, in Russia Stalin was sending thousands of his opponents to the Gulag prison camps.

It was within such a global context, Spain’s General Francisco Franco launched his military coup in July 1936

“It was an illegal uprising by an anti-democratic group – and that’s why so many young idealists were disgusted by it,” says Mike, a retired lecturer who has spent years researching the period and visiting the battlefields. “It was a war of ideology.”

The Sheffield Peace Council, a socialist group set up to campaign for international disarmament, immediately began a programme of aid for the Republican government, which soon became an underground recruitment drive for possible fighters.

Among those who signed up was the 28-year-old Sam Wild, though in Manchester where he was then living, rather than Sheffield

A one-time navy man, Sam had become highly-politicised while unable to find work in the depression-hit 1930s, and was adamantly opposed to Fascism.

“After agreeing to fight, everything was sorted out for him,” says Mike, 71. “He was put on a midnight train to London, then shipped across to Paris. From there he caught the train to Perpignan and, after some very basic training, he was trucked out to the front lines.

“He signed up in December 1936 and was fighting by February.”

It was in this first battle – the Battle of Jarama, an infamously bloody conflict for control of the Valencia-Madrid road – that Sam was shot. While they attempted to cover a tactical retreat, his column was advanced on by Moorish mercenaries who peppered them with fire. Though the troops managed to repel the attack and eventually secured the road, Sam was left with two bullets in his arms and two in his left side.

“He was told at hospital to go home,” says Mike. “But that wasn’t an option. He was a strong man, and he was back in action again by May – and he actually ended up getting shot four more times before the war ended.”

It was perhaps this courage and tenacity which saw him promoted up the ranks until he commanded a battalion of 2,000 International Brigade troops.

He stayed in Spain for the duration of the conflict, travelling from front to front, and was eventually given the Spanish Medal of Valour.

“His untiring energy, efficiency and sangfroid gave an example of bravery to the whole battalion,” the dispatch read.

But Sam, who was born in Lancashire and moved to Sheffield after the Second World War, was not the only one who made a name for himself during the conflict.

There was also Tommy James, a Rotherham socialist, who went out in December 1936 and would later arrange for the legendary Spanish artist Pablo Picasso to come and speak in Sheffield.

And Arthur Newsum, a Sheffield communist born in Grove Street, Pitsmoor, of whom little is known, other than that when he was killed while serving on the Jaen front, aged just 26, more than 200 people attended a memorial service in Sheffield.

Yet for all the efforts of Sam, Arthur and Tom, and indeed thousands more like them who volunteered for the International Brigade, the Republicans were eventually defeated.

Breaking the global non-intervention pact, Hitler sent his newly-created Luftwaffe – the same force which later devastated Sheffield during the 1940 Blitz – to support Franco.

The bombing raids on cities like Guernica eventually broke the morale of the Republican government while Fascist troops, supported by Italian armaments, inflicted increasingly bitter defeats on the ground.

Fearing defeat, the Republican government thanked the International Brigade and told them to leave Spain.

On February 27, 1939, the Franco regime was recognised as the new Spanish government.

The country remained a military dictatorship until 1977.

Any relatives or anyone with any information about South Yorkshire men who joined the International Brigade are asked to email Mike Wild on mikesamwild@fsmail.net with a view to being included in the upcoming exhibitions.

The South Yorks contingent

THOSE who volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War did so illegally.

As such, few records were kept on who went out there to fight. However we do know the following 26 men all went from South Yorkshire. Unless stated they survived the war:

From Sheffield: M Aaronberg (killed at Jarama, 1937); Joe Albaya; Clem Beckett (killed at Jarama, 1937); A Cooper (unrecorded); Tommy Degnan; Frank Girling; James McDonald; Arthur Newsum (killed at Cordoba, 1937); Walter Ryder; Alfred Stirling; Frederick Sykes (killed at Jarama, 1937); George Turnhill (killed at Teruel, 1938); D Weston; H Windle; Sam Wild.

From Rotherham: Geoffrey Alstopp (killed at Caspe, 1938); Tommy James; Joseph Maiden; Chris Smith.

nFrom Doncaster: Hector Barber; Thomas Nottingham; H Tagg (killed at Jarama, 1937).

From Barnsley: William Brent (killed at Aragon, 1938); John Hallworth; Harold Horbury; Norman Mason (killed at Aragon, 1938); Stephen Ward.

The exhibitions and events

A main exhibition is to be held at Sheffield University’s Jessop West building from July 4 - 17. Called Antifascistas, it will look at the history of the conflict and its global consequences.

A complementary display, called Behind The Clenched Fist, will run over the same period at Sheffield’s Local Studies Library. This will focus on the South Yorkshire contingent who fought.

A rededication ceremony of the Olive Tree Memorial at Wortley Hall - dedicated to those from South Yorkshire who fought - will take place on Saturday, July 2.

A rededication ceremony of the Sheffield Memorial in the Peace Gardens will take place on Saturday, July 9, with a special display and music. A memorial concert at Sheffield Trades and Labour Club, in Duke Street, will take place the same Saturday.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/freedom_fighters_in_war_on_fascism_1_3158090

Should Sheffield have a monument to Blitz victims?

A NEW memorial to the victims of the Sheffield Blitz could be created under plans proposed by a city councillor.

Coun Pat Midgley, Labour member for Manor Castle, said: "This city endured two nights of intense bombing from air raids between December 12 and 15, 1940, killing and injuring over 2,000 local people and making 40,000 Sheffielders homeless."

She is proposing that fellow members of the authority "recognise the current memorial to the Sheffield blitz at Devonshire Green" but "resolve to consider creating a more visible and prominent memorial to commemorate not only those who lost their lives but also Sheffield's defiance in the face of such devastation."

Councillors will vote on whether to approve her motion at their full meeting at the Town Hall on Wednesday.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/headlines/Should-Sheffield-have-a-monument.6675614.jp

In my own opinion it should, I used to work on “The Moor” and always thought it had just been redeveloped rather than obliterated by German bombs.

Blitz 70th: Silent tribute to remember Sheffield victims

A SNOWY Sheffield cemetery fell silent in tribute to hundreds who lost their lives when the city was devastated by German bombers 70 years ago.

Wreaths were laid and a minute's silence observed at City Road Cemetery to mark the anniversary of the Sheffield Blitz.

The ceremony took place yesterday at the mass grave for victims of the World War II bombings.

Several local community groups took part alongside police officers, MP Paul Blomfield, Manor and Castle Development Trust, Park Community Action, Skye Edge Group, Manor Top PA and one of The Star's Women of Steel, Dorothy Slingsby.

Children from Wybourn Primary School joined in and laid their own floral tribute.

A total of 668 Sheffield civilians and 25 servicemen died, 1,586 were injured, and 40,000 made homeless during two nights of bombing in 1940.

Yesterday's event was organised to remember effect war has on the ordinary people and pay tribute to their sacrifices.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/Blitz-70th-Silent-tribute-to.6657742.jp