Sergeant. 1/6th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment. Service number: 1498. later service number: 265067.
This blog post is a collaboration with Patricia Bryden via Facebook, on the Bingley photos and memories Facebook group. January/February 2024. Herbert isn’t from Keighley and the Worth Valley, but his story deserves to be told.
Early life:
My grandfather Herbert Bryden was not a ‘Man of Worth’ by birth, having been born in Morley on 21 August 1894. He was still in Morley in 1901. However, families often uprooted themselves and followed the prospects of employment and the family were in Micklefield, Tadcaster in 1902. In 1911, at the age of 16, the family are living in Gisburn Street, Barnoldswick and Herbert is working as a vanman. Twelve members of his family, spanning three generations occupied a small terraced cottage. His father Tom was a Cab Driver and his sisters were being inducted into cotton industry as soon as they were old enough to work. The terms ‘vanman’’ and cab driver’ conjure up images of motor vehicles today but at the beginning of the 20th century, they may have been horse-drawn.
Sergeant Herbert Bryden and Edith Kenyon’s wedding photo, dated 18th January 1919.
I’m not sure how their meeting took place but by 1914, he had become engaged to Leeds born Edith Kenyon the eldest of eleven children living with her family in King Street, Silsden and working as a worsted spinner. Their engagement was to be a long one as the onset of WWI interrupted their plans.
The above wedding photo includes Walter Bland who’d had his right leg amputated in August 1916 due to a gunshot wound. He is the man wearing the ‘Silver War Badge’ on his lapel with a silver chain and this badge shows he had served his country and was no longer fit for duty, usually due to wounds or sickness. These were all numbered to each individual and if you lost it, they would not be replaced, so the men usually added a small chain for extra security, making them easy to spot in photographs such as this.
War service:
The war record of the 1/6th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment records how the Craven Territorials left their homes and jobs and went to war at their country’s call. The very lengthy war record gives a comprehensive history and I learned that Herbert, aged 20, whose occupation was described as ‘carter’, was placed in the Transport section which ‘left Doncaster on the night of April 12th 1915 and crossed from Southampton to Le Havre on the night of 13/14 April’. The war record gives a brief comment: ‘Sergt. Bryden, MM, early distinguished himself’. The men of the Transport section are given credit for ‘a wonderful performance at Merville Station, when the whole battalion, complete with horses, mules, waggons, cookers, watercarts and everything else, was loaded on a train ready to start eighteen minutes after entering the station yard’.
A photo of Herbert in uniform and on horseback.
The London Gazette of Friday 25 January 1918 has an entry for Herbert: 265067 Cpl. H. Bryden, W. Rid. R. (Barnoldswick). He has been awarded the Military Medal for bravery in the Field.
(His promotion to Sergeant postdates this entry.)
The war record supports the family anecdote that Herbert was ‘working with the big horses’ in WWI. So, yes, Herbert was one of the lucky ones, returning home after the war to his family and able to take up employment with Bingley UDC as a wagon driver. He was discharged when his unit became disembodied from the Army on 19th July 1919. He was awarded the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal for his war service and he was also a recipient of the Territorial Efficiency Medal. Along with his Military Medal, he would have worn five medals.
Herbert’s elder brother, John Thomas, served in the RASC. One of the twelve family members living in Barnoldswick in 1911, Frank Wharton, husband to Herbert’s elder sister Martha Ann, was killed on the Somme on 1 September 1918, leaving three young children.
Herbert and Edith Kenyon were married on 29 January 1919 at All Saints Church, Bingley. Photograph Edith was living with her family at 6 Millgate. Her father John Thomas Kenyon was Gasworks Foreman. Herbert’s father, Tom, was still living in Barnoldswick and his occupation is shown as Locomotive Engine Driver. After living in Main Street and Prospect Street, Bingley, Herbert and Edith and their two sons moved to Marley View, Crossflatts.
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Herbert after the Great War, in Bingley’s White Horse Yard with a horse decorated for a parade.
Left to right, Leonard, Herbert and Allan Bryden.
Post war:
In the post-war years, Herbert became a member of The Countess Mountbatten’s own Legion of Frontiersmen, a ‘non-political and non-discriminatory civilian organisation recruited predominantly from the ex-service community’ with the ethos ‘formed for fellowship and to assist the government in times of need’. I was puzzled when I came across this photograph of Herbert in what appeared to be a ‘Mountie’ uniform; in fact this was adopted by The Frontiersmen.
Edith with a long coat and hat and Herbert dressed in the uniform of the League of Frontiersmen wearing his five medals.
An (undated) Bingley Guardian photograph shows Herbert as a Sergeant in the Crossflatts Home Guard, seated to the right of the company commander. His younger son, Allan, stands just behind him to his right. My father, Leonard is not shown on this photograph having begun military service in May 1940 in the York and Lancaster Regiment. A photograph of the three of them must have been taken before 1940.
Tragic death:
Herbert’s two sons both served in the Army in WWII. I often wonder about my Grandma Edith’s feelings at this time. She saw her fiancée leave for an horrific theatre of war in 1915, and now both her sons had left home for the same purpose. A much worse tragedy was to come: Herbert, aged 47 at the time, was killed in a Bingley Urban District Council wagon smash on Christmas Eve 1941. A Yorkshire Post inquest report cited locking of the brakes as the cause of the wagon crashing into a wall. Joseph Cartwright of Harden was in hospital with a serious head injury but was recovering. The two other men in the crew were injured.
Edith’s niece who lived two doors away in Crossflatts remembers her mother (Edith’s sister) bringing the news. A young child at the time, she particularly remembers the Christmas decorations were immediately removed from both houses. At Herbert’s funeral, The Frontiersmen are reported as having formed a smartly-turned out guard of honour.
My father, Leonard, came home on compassionate leave when Herbert was killed, and the family anecdote is that Leonard was absent from his battalion when it embarked for Burma; this felt like a very lucky escape and he continued to serve as a Signaller in Scotland and Ireland. I can remember my grandma telling me that her second son, Allan served in the Army in Europe as a despatch rider. Both sons survived WWII. Edith lived to the age of 90 and she is buried with Herbert in Bingley cemetery.
Information sources:
1901 Census Record England
1911 Census Record England
1939 England and Wales Register
UK, British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Cards 1914-1920
UK, WWI, British Army Recipients of the Military Medal, 1914-1920
England & Wales Civil Registration Birth Index 1837-1915
England & Wales Civil Registration Marriage Index 1916-2005
West Yorkshire, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1813-1935
England & Wales Civil Registration Death Index 1916-2007
UK WWI Service Medal and Award Rolls 1914-1920
UK & Ireland, Find A Grave Index, 1300s-current
UK, Historical Documents Library, 1900-1960
UK, Nominal Index of All Service Personnel Serving in a Theatre of War 1914-1919
Keighley News archive at Keighley Library
British Newspaper Archive.
