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5th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment
5th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's Own), a territorial battalion was in York in August 1914 when war broke out, on the 10th of August they moved to Selby, and end of the month to Strenshall, in late October they returned to York. In March 1915 they moved to Gainsborough before proceeding to France, sailing from Folkestone on the 15th of April 1915, landing at Boulogne with the 146th Brigade, 49th (West Riding) Division.They served on the Western Front throughout the conflict, seeing action at Aubers Ridge, on the Somme, the Flanders Coast, the Third Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Lys and the Final Advance in Picardy.
4th Aug 1914 West Yorkshire Territorials march into Scarborough The Territorials of the West Riding Brigade, 5th, 7th and 8th Battalions West Yorkshire Regiment broke camp near Scarborough and marched to Scarborough railway station to entrain for the journey home.
10th Aug 1914 West Yorks Territorials concentrate at Selby The territorials of the West Yorkshire Regiment arrive at Selby on the 10th of August, the 5th Battalion arriving from York, the 6th Battalion from Bradford, the 7th and 8th Battalions from their base at Carlton Barracks.
2nd May 1915 On the March 
8th May 1915 Orders
9th May 1915 Attack Made
17th May 1915 Orders
16th Oct 1915 The Derby Scheme
1st Dec 1915 Derby Scheme Armlets
11th Sep 1915 Last day of Derby Scheme Recruitment
10th Jan 1916 Group System Reopens
9th February 1916 Call Ups
25th Mar 1917 Enemy Attack
4th June 1917 Entertainment
5th June 1917 Reliefs
13th June 1917 Reliefs
13th June 1917 Horse Show
14th June 1917 Horse Show
15th June 1917 Reconnaissance
17th June 1917 Reliefs
23rd June 1917 Reliefs
29th June 1917 Reliefs
1st Nov 1917 Inspection
2nd Nov 1917 Training
3rd Nov 1917 Orders
4th Nov 1917 Orders
5th Nov 1917 Demonstration
6th Nov 1917 Orders
7th Nov 1917 Orders
8th Nov 1917 On the Move
9th Nov 1917 Reliefs
11th Nov 1917 Reliefs
12th Nov 1917 Reliefs
13th Nov 1917 Some Shelling
14th Nov 1917 Shelling
15th Nov 1917 Reliefs
16th Nov 1917 Shelling
17th Nov 1917 Prisoners
18th Nov 1917 Shelling
19th Nov 1917 Prisoners
24th Nov 1917 Shelling
25th Nov 1917 Shelling
28th Nov 1917 Reliefs
29th Nov 1917 Reliefs
1st Mar 1918 Raid
6th Mar 1918 Shelling
7th Mar 1918 Information
8th Mar 1918 Artillery Active
9th Mar 1918 Counter Attack
10th Mar 1918 Quiet
12th Mar 1918 Balloon
13th Mar 1918 Trench Raid
14th Mar 1918 Shellfire
15th Mar 1918 Artillery Active
16th Mar 1918 Artillery Active
17th Mar 1918 Raid
18th Mar 1918 Shelling
19th Mar 1918 Quieter
20th Mar 1918 Shelling
21st Mar 1918 Gas
22nd Mar 1918 Enemy Quieter
23rd Mar 1918 Enemy Quieter
24th Mar 1918 Prisoners
25th Mar 1918 Raids
26th Mar 1918 Orders
27th Mar 1918 Reliefs
28th Mar 1918 Quiet
29th Mar 1918 Quiet
30th Mar 1918 Reliefs
31st Mar 1918 Quiet
1st Apr 1918 Reliefs
2nd Apr 1918 Intermittent Shelling
3rd Apr 1918 Reliefs
4th Apr 1918 Quiet
5th Apr 1918 Reliefs
6th Apr 1918 Reliefs
7th Apr 1918 Raid
8th Apr 1918 Prisoners
9th Apr 1918 Orders
10th Apr 1918 Attack Made
11th Apr 1918 Rearguard Action
12th Apr 1918 Line Holding
13th Apr 1918 Line Holding
19th Apr 1918 Reliefs
28th May 1918 Hard Fighting
If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.
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| Want to know more about 5th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment? There are:5314 items tagged 5th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment available in our Library
These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Great War.
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Those known to have served with5th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment during the Great War 1914-1918. - Allen Richard Gerrard Ross. 2nd Lt. (d.16th Nov 1916)
- Arundel Alwyn. Sgt.
- Binns Albert. L/Cpl.
- Bishop Charles. Pte. (d.13th Jul 1915)
- Howard Percy. Pte. (d.3rd Sep 1916)
- Husband Robert. L/Cpl.
- Kitson MM. Thomas Ralph. L/Cpl.
- Metcalfe Joseph. Pte. (d.3rd May 1917)
- Savory James Henry. Pte. (d.27th May 1918)
- Thundercliffe Henry Francis. Pte. (d.9th Oct 1917)
- Tolmie George. Pte. (d.25th July 1918)
- Ward John Thomas. Pte. (d.23rd July 1916)
- Wilson Arnold. 2nd Lt. (d.3rd May 1917)
- Wye George William. Pte. (d.25th April 1918)
All names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed,
please Add a Name to this List
Records of 5th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment from other sources.
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L/Cpl. Albert Binns 10th Btn. West Yorkshire Regiment Albert Binns volunteered for the cavalry and was sent for training at Aldershot but was discharged for poor eyesight.
He then volunteered for the West Yorkshire Regiment and after training was sent to the front. It has taken me many years to trace his history but I have learnt that he fought at the Somme was bayoneted (seen the wound) but military hospital detail missing. He went back to the front to be shot in the right wrist and returned a third time only to fall foul of mustard gas in 1918.
He passed away in 1963 as Sgt. Albert Binns.
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L/Cpl. Robert Husband 5th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment Robert Husband (my grandfather) died in 1938 as a result of injuries sustained during the First World War.
The news article printed at the time of his death says,
"In the Great War Mr Husband joined up with the first batch of the 5th Battalion the West Yorkshire Regiment, and after 21 successive days in the front line during the Battle of the Somme he was badly wounded in the wrist, which turned septic. He was also gassed. He was in hospital in London for a year and for three months at Becketts Park, Leeds after which he was discharged at Ripon."
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Pte. George Tolmie 1/5th Btn. West Yorkshire Regiment (d.25th July 1918) My grandfather, George Tolmie of the 1/5th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, was killed in action at the Second Battle of Kemmel Ridge on the 25th of July 1918. CWGC shows his death as 27th July 1918 and not the 25th.
After the end of WW1 Georges widow, Elsie, married again to James Crofts from Sheffield. They went on to have three children, my mother Marion and two sons, Jim and Reg.
Jim was hit in the back by a piece of shrapnel at Dunkirk, was rescued and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He was serving in The Black Watch.
Reg served in the Recce Regt, landed on D Day +1 and went right through to Berlin without a scratch.
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2nd Lt. Arnold Wilson 5th Btn. West Yorkshire Regiment (d.3rd May 1917) Arnold Wilson was killed during the attack on Bourlon Wood and is remembered on the Arras Memorial. He was the son of John and Ruth Wilson, 22 Tennyson Road, Wibsey, Bradford.
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Pte. John Thomas Ward 1st Btn. West Yorkshire Regiment (d.23rd July 1916) John Ward was the Brother of my Husband's Grandma.
John Thomas Ward, or John T as he was sometimes known, was a soldier at the time of his marriage to Miss Lillian Link in February 1916. A few months later he was injured in Flanders and died of wounds on 23rd July 1916. He is buried in Abberville Communal Cemetery in Somme, France.
He was posthumously awarded the British War and Victory Medals on 31st of March 1920. According to that medal roll, John Thomas also served in the 5th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment.
It would be great to find out more information about John Thomas, so we could know more about him. I have no photos.
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Pte. Henry Francis Thundercliffe 5th Btn. D Coy. 13 Pltoon. West Yorkshire Regiment (d.9th Oct 1917)  203120 Private Henry Francis Thundercliffe of D Company, X111 Platoon, 1st/5th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales Own) was wounded on the morning of 9th of October 1917 during the assault on Peter Pan/Wolf Copse D.4.c.9.7 during the Battle of Passchendaele. He was found about 24 hours later in a shell hole at the bottom of the ridge and was taken toward a dressing station still under fire but had to be left in a shell hole about 80 yards from the dressing station due to mud and heavy firing. He was never seen again.
Here is an extract of the letter sent to his mother by The British Red Cross and Order of St John.
Dear Madam,
In reply to your enquiry, we have received the following report. Corp. C. Mitchell 202162. D Coy: now in France says;
"We found Thundercliffe about 24hrs after our first advance at Passchendaele on 9th October. He was lying in a shell hole about 30yards from the bottom of the ridge. This was at night. He called out to us. We went to him and two of us took him back about 60 yards towards the Dressing Station. There we had to leave him in a shell hole. We could not go any further because of the mud and heavy firing. He was wounded but quite cheery. The spot we left him was about 80yards from the 1st Aid Post. I knew him well. He came from Hull."
This report must leave your son's final fate still uncertain.
His body was never recovered and his name is engraved on the Tyne Cot Memorial.
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Pte. Joseph Metcalfe 5th Btn. West Yorks (d.3rd May 1917) My grandfather, Joseph, worked in a foundry in York and he was a keen fisherman. He was married to Margaret and had five children. The middle one was Violet while the other four were boys, in descending order of age, William, Joseph, Frederick and, my father, Edward who was born on the 8th December, 1913.
It is reputed that when Joseph found that his city was being bombed by Zepperlins he volunteered for the West Yorks. He trained in the UK but I do not know where, except that Grandma is reckoned to have taken his children to wave goodbye to him as his train passed through York. It might, therefore, have been Colsterdale where he undertook initial training but there is also rumour that he completed training on Salisbury Plain.
I don't know when or where he landed in France as the War Office tell me that records pertaining to him were lost due to bomb damage in WWII. He died on the disastrous advance from Arras on 3rd May 1917. He was one of the many 'missing believed lost' and a report, unsubstantiated, states that during the advance he took a direct hit from a shell to the head.
His daughter Violet told of the many visits her mother made to the docks when she heard that repatriated troops were being landed at the docks in Hull.
She later remarried and had another family and sadly some of Joseph's personal things 'went missing'. The saddest loss of all is the bronze 'Widow's Penny' which 'disappeared' in York following the divorce of his second son who was the 'keeper' of it. My father passed on to me Joseph's medals and watch, while my cousin, Frederick's eldest gave me a late framed photo of Joseph taken before the war and we have one of him in uniform.
wrote an article in the York Press requesting readers to search to see if they acquired his bronze Widow's Penny but to no avail. I would dearly like to have it back in the family's possession. I have visited the Arras memorial where he is listed among the dead.
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Pte. James Henry Savory 5th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment (d.27th May 1918) James Henry Savory trained with the 52nd Graduated Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment and went into action with the 5th Btn. He died on the 27th of May 1918
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Pte. Percy Howard 1/5th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment (d.3rd Sep 1916) My great-uncle, Private Percy Howard, was the eldest brother of my grandmother, Hilda. In 1911, at age 18 he was working in the family's greengrocer business, in Batley, Yorkshire. I believe he was killed near Pozieres, Somme, on 3 September 1916, and his sacrifice is remembered at the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.
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2nd Lt. Richard Gerrard Ross Allen 5th Btn. West Yorkshire Regiment (d.16th Nov 1916) Lieutenant Richard Gerrard Ross Allen, son of Richard and Lucy Allen of Cambrian House, Burgess Hill, Sussex, was born in Dublin and lived in Cavan, County Cavan when he enlisted with the Royal Flying Corps. He later travelled to France to fight with the West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's Own) 5th Battalion. He died in France during The Battle of the Somme aged 26, and is buried at Serre Road Cemetery No. 1, Pas De Calais, France.
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Pte. Charles Bishop 1/5th Btn. West Yorkshire Regiment (d.13th Jul 1915) Father Who Died Like a True Gentleman
“He died like a true English gentleman,†is an officer's tribute to a Huby private killed in action. He was Pte Charles Bishop, of the Harrogate Territorials (1/5th West Yorkshires), and was one of the three sons and one grandson of Mrs John Bishop, of Huby, all of whom volunteered their services. Their portraits appear in this issue.
Pte. Bishop was killed as he was coming out of the trenches, the bullet severing the jugular vein. He was 38 years of age, and leaves a widow and 4 children. The high esteem in which Private Bishop was held by his comrades is shown in the letter to his widow from Lieut J C Walker, who says, - "I have refrained from writing to you until I thought your grief would have subsided a little. But I now wish to let you know of the high opinion we all had of your late husband. He was a grand example to my younger fellows, and a good soldier who died like a true English Gentleman. I much regret his loss and example, but feel sure you will feel happier when you know we all liked him so much, and feel his loss. Believe me, etc."
Private Bishop's son - Maurice, aged 18 - is serving in the 2/5th West Yorkshires, and in the same regiment is his brother, Herbert, whilst another brother - Abel - is in the Yorkshire Hussars.
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