A new book chronicles the part Wensleydale played during the two world wars and celebrates the lives of the 221 men from the dale who paid the ultimate sacrifice. As Rememberence Day beckons, Lindsay Jennings reports.

IT was a light, spring morning with signs of life bursting forth in every flower and budded tree. But Sergeant Thomas Foster was not cheered by the sight. Instead, he walked through the village of Thoresby, in Wensleydale, with a feeling of foreboding in his heart.

He was near the end of his leave and soon he would be back with his comrades in the 5th Battalion Grenadier Guards and heading for North Africa. He would also be leaving behind his lovely new wife, Irene.

He walked onwards through the village with local postman, Robert Raw, a veteran of the First World War. "I don't think I will come back from this," said the farmer's son.

"Of course you will," replied the postman, before describing how he had come through the Great War and had even survived after being captured as a prisoner.

Just a few weeks later, Tom Foster was dead. He fell on Thursday April 29, 1943, while fighting in Medjez, Tunisia. He was 25.

His name is one of 221 men who feature on the war memorials in the villages and towns running from Thornton Steward in the east to Hardraw in the west of Wensleydale. Now, thanks to the meticulous research of author Keith Taylor, his story and dozens of others have been preserved for generations to read in Wensleydale Remembered, The Sacrifice Made By The Families Of A Northern Dale, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.

Keith, 57, was supposed to be enjoying a walking holiday in Wensleydale when he came across a list of the fallen from the First World War inside the church at Stainforth. Beside the list was a brief history of each serviceman and often a photograph. The retired deputy headteacher had come to the dale to rest after completing a similar history project charting the lives of the war dead in a couple of parishes in his native Peak District. But he felt overwhelmingly that he wanted to do something for the "lads" of Wensleydale and celebrate their lives with a book.

"Wensleydale is an area I love and remembering these men was very rewarding," says Keith, who lives near Matlock, Derbyshire. "I wanted to find out, where possible, about their lives and deaths so that others would be able to appreciate their supreme sacrifices."

It took Keith a year to research and he began by taking a list of all the names on the war memorials. He then checked them painstakingly against the names in the telephone directory and began dialling numbers.

"There were a few wrong numbers," he admits, "but I got through to one or two who were connected. They were wonderful, very kind people and very patient and often they would give me the name of someone else after we had finished."

Keith also used archives such as the Darlington & Stockton Times and the Census and he researched the records of scores of battalions and regiments. The book features old photographs of Wensleydale's servicemen, their wives and families, Army camps, temporary cinemas and recruitment parades. His work presents a vivid picture of what life was like in the dale during the two wars, both for the men who served and those who were left behind.

He describes how Wensleydale played a major part in homing refugees during the two wars - Belgians during the First World War and hundreds of children from the cities during the second.

During the second war, special trains arrived at Leyburn station bringing schoolchildren from the industrial North-East. Evacuees were handed emergency rations and refreshments and some were ferried out to new homes by bus or by rail to Aysgarth, Askrigg and Hawes.

One of the evacuees, 14-year-old Olive Wright, arrived by bus at the parish room, Lowerthorpe, East Witton, on a damp September afternoon. The only two smiles she saw that day, she later said, were from East Witton headteacher Rosamund Thwaite and Florence Cutter, an estate secretary.

Says Keith: "Olive came with her younger brother and sister during the war. When she moved to a different school in Sunderland, she continued to come back to the dale to visit them. She had a connection with a farming family and eventually married into the family and so came back into the dale and lived there all her life."

The dale was also just as vulnerable to the German Luftwaffe as any other part of the country. Masham suffered the most on the night of April 16, 1941, when a bomb partially destroyed the White Boar Inn, killing two couples. On another occasion, a bomb which landed close to Nellholme, near Aysgarth, failed to explode. An army bomb disposal team was called out and left their work when torrential rain fell. A quarter of an hour later the bomb exploded.

Wensleydale folk also rallied to the cause when volunteers were required for a new force called the Local Defence Volunteers (nicknamed "Look, Duck and Vanish") which was eventually renamed the Home Guard.

Volunteers in Wensleydale gave their names to the local police stations and the 11th Battalion North Riding Home Guard was formed. The two phones in the HQ were manned by women, who were kept busy when the platoons went on training manoeuvres.

Target practice with rifles was held in Leyburn Town Hall, at Shawl Quarry and at nearby Bellerby camp and range. Across the dale, village halls, scout huts and club rooms were turned into headquarters for platoons. The wooded land from Bedale to Hawes proved ideal for keeping Army stores with its camouflage cover. Meanwhile, the Scots Guards, who were stationed in Hawes, tested the strength of Gayle Bridge, which in peacetime had a restriction of four tons, while using their Churchill tanks. They also used Gayle Mill pond for submerged tank training in preparation for the D-Day landings.

Beside all the military activity, the locals also rallied around to help the war effort. "The women would meet up and sew and make mittens and scarves and send them off to the troops," says Keith. "They also held dances in the village halls and whist drives to raise money, particularly to send out at Christmas."

But it is the deeply felt tributes to the men who fell and the details about them - their lives, families, how they died - which makes for a compelling read. They include Christopher Jones, landlord of the Crown Hotel at Hawes, who lost his eldest son Charles Heseltine Jones, during the First World War in 1917, and then his younger son, Richard, a first radio officer in the navy when his ship went down in 1940.

It is also given added poignancy by the letters which accompany some of the tributes, such as a senior officer in the Fusiliers who wrote to the parents of Captain Robert Watson of Hardraw, killed on Sunday, February 15, 1942, while fighting in Singapore.

"His leadership of the Company in action was typical of his earlier work in the training stages, to do his best at any cost; and he upheld the highest traditions of our regiment to the end," writes the officer.

Now his book has been published, Keith has decided to take a break.

"It almost became an obsession in a nice kind of way," he says. "I'm going to come to the dale and enjoy what I initially came to do - some walking."

* Wensleydale Remembered, The Sacrifice Made By The Families Of A Northern Dale 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 by Keith Taylor is available by post from Country Books, Courtyard Cottage, Little Longstone, Bakewell, Derbyshire, DE45 1NN. Priced £14, including post and packaging.