Bygone Burnley, with SUSAN HALSTEAD

EARLIER this year on August 4 we commemorated the beginning of the First World War.

There is much material in the Local Studies collection of Burnley Reference Library which cannot be found elsewhere and highlights the harsh effects of the war on local people.

Published histories often record the bare statistics of battles, dates and lives lost, but it is personal memories which record the "real" war.

The North West Sound Archive, based in Clitheroe Castle, has recorded local men's war experiences in "The War to End All Wars -- memories of the Great War 1914-1918."

A Burnley man recalls joining up in November, 1914 at "the Barracks....they had a table outside, even in that weather, and everybody could sit an' I went round and said I were 17....I were 16 -- I were a month off being 17-year-old....I walked round table and put a year on.

"Quite true is that. This Sergeant-Major, a big fellow-like, he says, "Come 'ere, young 'un, walk round this table and put another year on, you'll be all right!".

Another soldier remembers a gruesome night which can make us smile now but maybe it was not so funny at the time!

"I was sent to get some water (but) it was impossible for me to get back to the line. So I saw a lot of people all laid down and I thought, well I might as well get down and get asleep in the middle of this lot here and keep warm.

"I thought they're not so warm but anyroad I went to sleep and the morning after the stretcher bearers came and I'd been asleep in a mortuary all t'night and as soon as I get up.... I were very fair complexion and you should have seen the stretcher bearers -- they dropped their stretchers and run! They thought the dead were walking again!"

A recent donation has been "Burnley Loyal Pioneer: the Diary of Private Tom Jobling 12th Battalion (Pioneers), Loyal North Lancashire Regiment 1916 to 1919", edited by Denis Otter. Tom sailed from Marseilles to Salonika and his first morning on board saw his turn to be orderly and serve breakfast for 20 men on deck.

"Found it was much easier coming up than going down but managed to do it without spilling the porridge or tea. Washed up and scrubbed table and floor. 'Some job' as some of the lads were sea-sick."

How difficult it must have been to face battle after suffering such personal, physical hardships.

Of course, conditions were no better on dry land and the troops spent a fortnight at a camp trying to avoid additional dangers from "breaking the mules -- some of them were half-mad and lashed out in all directions.

"Our shoes used to be frozen to the tent when we got up in the morning and we used to burn paper in them before putting them on."

Jack Horsfall has written "Go One Better" -- the story of and guide to the battles on the Western Front of the 42nd East Lancashire Division when it arrived from Egypt in March, 1917 to the armistice on November 11, 1918"

It is too large to be published but is an invaluable record of a journey exploring the towns and villages in which our local soldiers fought and died; the work is well illustrated with "then and now" photographs, views of the war cemeteries and maps to show the location of the battles. One of the first to die from the Division at the beginning of the war was not yet a man -- Private F T Finucane was just 15 years of age, when he died on November 27, 1914.

For those trying to trace family members who fought in the war, "Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919" is a series of books with alphabetical lists of names of those who died, with details of birthplace, place of enrolment, rank, date and place of death; we hold the volumes for all the local regiments and the cd-rom is on order.

The library also holds a computerised index to obituaries in local newspapers from 1852 to date and it is hoped that this index will be available on the library website later this year (www.lancashire.gov.uk/librari es/)

An exhibition of information from newspapers relating to local men in both world wars, along with photographs and maps, is currently on display in the Lending Department of Burnley Library.

One of these historians, Andrew Mackay, has recorded a little known battle in a small Flanders village in 1915 in "Burnley and Local Men's Involvement in Boesinghe -- The Forgotten Battle, July 6-10, 1915."

Men from local regiments successfully defended the trenches against heavy fire from the Germans, but 320 men died in the action, 11 of whom were from Burnley; a twelfth later died from wounds and another 22 local men were wounded.

Private Thomas Launder of the 1st East Lancashire Regiment was wounded and wrote to his wife:

"I shall never forget my birthday here as long as I live.

"The bombardment was on all day and I was as near death as possible. It is terrible. Shells were bursting all around us, one shell burst about 20 yards from me but though I was covered with earth I came out with nothing worse than a finger touched. .

"I would give the world to be in Burnley again!"