How it all began ...

On Friday 4^th September 1914 a letter was published in the weekly edition of the 'Craven Herald and Wensleydale Standard'; the letter ran to just 432 words but it was to change the lives of hundreds of local residents. The message of the letter was simple; it was an appeal by local businessman Harry Gilbert Tunstill, “to raise 99 men from this district and so form, together with my own enlistment, one whole company of 100 strong … rallying to the Country’s call for soldiers in the desperate struggle now confronting the Nation, and upon which depends our very existence as an Empire”. Tunstill’s appeal struck a chord with the local population and in little more than two weeks he had raised his company. 

On Monday 21^st September Tunstill, with his fellow recruits from the Craven District departed to begin their military training. En route to Halifax they were joined by other contingents from the wider area of North and West Yorkshire to form a whole company, 240-strong, who were to become ‘A’ Company in the newly-formed 10^th (Service) Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment. Over the next four years they would take part in some of the fiercest fighting of the Great War. To the locals they were, and would remain throughout the war, ‘Captain Tunstill’s Men’.

Over the next four and a half years we will follow in the footsteps of Gilbert Tunstill and his men; day-by-day following their progress through training, into action in France, Belgium and Italy and, for some, their return to civilian life.