THERE are no McLoughrys mentioned on the memorial at Darlington Memorial Hospital, but last week we suggested Roland McLoughry should have been on there.
He lived all his life in Darlington, where his father had a flour mill in the King Street area.
But Roland had an elder brother who also fell in the Great War: John Clythe McLoughry. So there should be two McLoughrys on the memorial.
They were the sons of a flour miller, of King Street in Darlington town centre. Joyce Johnson’s father, Clarence, was their brother.
“Before the war, they all worked in my grandfather’s flour mill,” she says. “My father used to say how they needed two horses to get the cart up Stapleton bank. At the top, they unhitched one of the horses and he had to ride it barebacked back to the stables in King Street.”
John George McLoughry (1864-1947) leans with his elbow on his cart at his flour mill in King Street, Darlington. The other men are his employess. The horse looks to be dressed up for a parade
Clythe was the first of the brothers to die. He had emigrated to Australia around 1910, and joined the Australian Infantry. Aged 26, he was killed on May 3, 1917, near Arras, was buried in Ecoust-St Mein and is remembered on the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Roland, 20, (above, with two female family members) fell on March 4, 1918, during the German Spring Offensive on the Somme – this was the enemy’s last throw of the dice.
He was a driver in the Royal Field Artillery. His body was never recovered and so his name is one of the 14,657 on the Pozieres memorial. He is accompanied by the names of 618 members of the DLI who died in the offensive.
“Two days after Roland was killed,” continues Joyce, “my father Clarence was taken prisoner at La Bassee in the Spring Offensive. He was wounded in the shoulder and hip – he once said he couldn’t run away – and he was sent to Stendal Prisoner of War camp in Germany until the end of the war.
Pte Clarence McLoughry, who was called up three days after his 18th birthday and was captured two days after his brother Roland was killed
“So my grandparents, John and Polly, had two sons killed and a third taken prisoner – it must have been so hard to accept.”
There is, though, one McLoughry on the memorial at Darlington hospital, and he is the cousin of Roland and Clythe. Pte Ivan McLoughry came from Elton Parade in Darlington and was 21 when he died on June 9, 1917, fighting with the DLI in Flanders. His father was a wood carver with a workshop in Mechanics Yard and a picture framing shop in Post House Wynd.
“It would be nice to see all three names on the memorial,” says Joyce. “It would be nice for everybody who fell and belonged Darlington to be on it.”
READ MORE: THE 155 MEN MISSING FROM THE DARLINGTON WAR MEMORIAL
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