DETAILS of nearly 2,000 North-East men who died in the First World War can now be found on The Northern Echo's dedicated website.

More than 1,000 of those men come from Darlington, and their records are the result of a decade of research by former teacher Stephen Nicholson.

"I've now got 1,095 names of Darlingtonians who were killed in the war," says Stephen, who was born in the town. "We know from national figures that that represents nine per cent of all who went to fight, so that means 10,000 or 11,000 men from Darlington must have joined up, out of a population of about 40,000.

"I'm always staggered by how great an impact the war must have had on the town for generations.

"These were ordinary people living ordinary lives, and then they were suddenly catapulted into something that is too awful for us to imagine."

On the searchable database, which is launched as the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the war approaches, Stephen's research is augmented by work done in The Northern Echo's archive by two Teesside University interns, Lisa White and Rick Robson.

During the war, the Echo, and its sister evening paper the Northern Despatch, published thousands of photos of local men from across the region who went away to fight. The interns have begun uploading their photos and stories onto the site, created by Echo web developers Michael Atkinson and Steven Whiteley.

The truly staggering material, though, comes from Stephen's Darlington research, which shows that two streets – Cumberland Street and Model Place – lost 13 men each, and one family – James of Westmoreland Street – lost four sons.

"I got interested when I went over on a school trip with my primary school kids and went around the preserved trenches at Vimy Ridge," says Stephen, a Darlington Grammar School old boy who taught in Otley for 30 years. "I realised that there were Darlingtonians buried everywhere.

I assumed there would be a central record of them all, but there isn't – the walls at the Memorial Hospital only have about 700 names on them – so I've tried to create one, and the website is great because I want the town to be aware of these men."

Stephen's research has been carried out at the Darlington Centre for Local Studies, at regimental museums and in the national archives, and anyone who would like to add to it can email him on darlingtongreatwar@hotmail.com.

On the Echo's website, thenortheastatwar.co.uk, you will also find an archive of the war stories that appeared in our Memories supplement. In the fullness of time, we hope to add to the website the regimental war diaries which show what was happening when each of the men died.

Stephen said: "At times, it can be very saddening because you are discussing someone's early death – it really was a waste of ordinary people. What hit me more than anything was when I found three Darlington men had committed suicide – they just snapped and could take no more."