IN August 1916, Nellie Vowles of Victory Road was told that her husband, James, had been killed during the Battle of the Somme.

Telegraphist James had worked for the Post Office before the war and had been married for only two years. For Nellie, six months pregnant, the loss of a husband was tragedy enough, but now she would have to bring up a child on her own. For her husband’s death she received a pension of 16 shillings per week (80p); a meagre sum even at the time.

Ilkley suffered grievously during the First World War; nearly 250 men and women from the town sacrificed their lives. The effect of this cataclysm on families was immense and enduring. In 1920, the local medical officer raised concerns about the welfare of the 40 fatherless children in Ilkley schools. Widows forced to survive on army pensions struggled and turned to local charities for assistance.

Fred Bott, a gardener from Wellington Road, was killed in 1918. His wife, Elizabeth, had to raise four children on a pension of just 33 shillings (£1.65) and relied on grants from the War Memorial Fund.

Relatives were rarely told about the circumstances of a loved one’s death. Letters from a nurse, chaplain or the soldier’s comrade attempting to offer comfort to the grieving often referred to death as being painless or instantaneous when the reverse was true.

Tom Huxley, a herdsman at Wharfedale Gate Farm, was killed after only ten days at the front. The battalion padre’s letter to his sister said that he had died immediately and without pain. The prayer book that Tom was carrying was returned to his family; it had been cleaved by the shrapnel that killed him.

Jimmy Ellis, a 22-year-old farmer, was badly wounded in the final days of the war. Riddled with gangrene, as his life ebbed away, his final words for his family and sweetheart were recorded by a Methodist chaplain.

William Geare, a curate at St Margaret’s Church, volunteered as an army padre and served with the Liverpool Regiment. Keen to meet the needs of his battalion, Geare asked his parishioners in Ilkley to send cigarettes for him to give to the soldiers.

It was while tending to a wounded soldier in No Man’s Land at Passchendaele that he was killed. In such high esteem was Geare held that two men went out under heavy fire to recover his body.

For some men the war caused deep moral conflict. Captain Corrall Turner, an engineer and former pupil at Ilkley Grammar, enlisted after deciding that duty came before his pacifist beliefs.

He died while courageously defending a trench at Arras and was recommended for the Victoria Cross. Kenneth Priestman, a Quaker and pacifist who began the war with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, overcame his moral objections and enlisted in the Royal Engineers only to die on the Somme in 1916.

Badly wounded during the war, Lawrence Scott wished to return to his university studies and applied for a disability pension. Despite his 50 per cent disability, his application was refused as the tribunal considered that he should spend time outdoors rather than in a classroom.

Distraught at the callousness of the decision, Lawrence returned home and hanged himself. He was Ilkley’s last casualty of the war, but is not named on the war memorial. Instead, his parents placed a plaque at Durham University which, when translated from the Latin, reads, “Broken by war, now dead for his country”.

The stories of Ilkley’s First World War fallen can be found at Ilkley Remembers: ilkleyremembers.blogspot.com.