Remembering the young Durhams cruelly killed at Guyzance

For Fate stalks through the training field
With neutral conscience he
Regards not foe or ally
The captive or the free.

A soldier is a pawn of fate,
He craves not fame or might,
His actions are in honour’s name
Defeating wrong with right.

Salute we those who years ago
In nineteen forty five
Claimed by the angry Coquet flood,
– Their names will e’er survive.

Hallowed be the memory
of the unforgotten ten,
Who shouldered arms as virgin boys
And died as active men.

The memorial stone for the Guyzance river tragedy where DLI soldiers lost their lives on a training exercise. The stone was originally an ASDA advert for "rock bottom prices" but was donated after their ad campaign finished.

ON a wooded riverbank high above the fast-flowing River Coquet in Northumberland is a stone monument dedicated to 10 young members of the Durham Light Infantry who died 80 years ago.

The stone is inscribed with a poem that tells how these 18-year-olds did not die as battlefield heroes but instead they were swept away when a training exercise in a swollen river ended in tragedy.

Their deaths were routinely tidied away in 1945 and then they became largely forgotten. They were just one of those terrible things that happens in war, until 20 years ago when the spot was marked by a stone salvaged from a Stockton supermarket where it had been advertising that prices had reached “rock bottom”.

The famous badge of the Durham Light Infantry..

The tragedy unfolded as the Second World War moved into its final stages. Brancepeth Castle, near Durham, was the home of No 4 Infantry Training Centre, where new recruits into the DLI and Duke of Wellington’s Regiment began their careers. After a few weeks basic training, they were sent to Felton in Northumberland for a gruelling six week course that was to prepare them for the hardships they might experience on the battlefield.

In January 1945, following British troops’ sweep across northern Europe after the D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches in June 1944, there were hopes that Germany itself would soon fall. Its capture would begin with British soldiers crossing the River Rhine – and so the trainees were sent to the Coquet, just east of the A1, to practice.

It is said that when they first arrived, their officers were warned by a couple of locals who lived nearby that the river was in too dangerous a condition, and the exercise was postponed.

When they returned, on Wednesday, January 17, after a weekend’s leave with their families in places that included Evenwood, Ferryhill and Annfield Plain, the Coquet was still in spate but the locals were away. They would have been able to tell the officers that the river was as high as it had been for years.

A bugler above the weir on the River Coquet at Guyzance where the 10 young soldiers drowned

The group had two flat-bottomed, canvas and wood, collapsible boats. The men had never been on the water before, and so the officer in charge of the exercise, 2nd Lt George Renills, spent half-an-hour teaching them how to paddle.

Then he and six of them launched the first boat.

From the Morpeth Herald of February 23, 1945, reporting on the inquests of the 10 who died at the Guyzance tragedy

“The river was fast but very smooth on the surface, and I have crossed rivers much worse,” he later told the inquest, “but apparently there was a very strong undercurrent.”

His boat successfully made it across, but the second boat was taken by the midstream current.

The 10 men in it managed to paddle it back to the side.

“This brought them to an overhanging tree and two men in the rear grabbed hold of some overhanging branches,” said 2nd Lt Renills. “I shouted to them that they were getting dangerously near the weir and to tow the boat back.

“The NCO in charge of the nine men in the boat shouted back: ‘It’s alright, I’ve been over the weir before’, but this was just a jocular remark.”

The weir had been made in 1775 to feed water into an ironworks. It spanned the 50-metre wide river and created a waterfall 10ft (2.5 metre) deep, but beneath it was a pool up to 40ft (12 metres) deep.

The branches the men were holding gave way and again the current grabbed the boat.

“The men started to paddle again and they were not paddling correctly and the boat was rapidly getting nearer the weir,” said 2nd Lt Renills. “I shouted to them to prepare to jump and I saw at least one start to take off his equipment.

“The boat went over the weir nose first with all the men out of it.

“I saw five of the men come to the top and start to swim, but they seemed to be pressed down again by the weight of the water, and they disappeared.”

An eyewitness told a newspaper: “The boys were in battledress wearing heavy army boots. I don’t know if any of them could swim, but they had no chance in the swirling water.”

On the bank, Sergeant Instructor Leslie Murray tied a rope around his waist and bravely dived in, but debris in the water hit his head and dazed him, and he had to be dragged out.

There was no saving the 10 lads.

When the inquest into their deaths was held a month later in Amble, only six bodies had been recovered – it wasn’t until May 28 that the Coquet released the last of its victims.

Coroner Hugh J Penny praised Sgt Inst Murray for diving into the “seething torrent” and said that all rules and regulations had been followed. However, he suggested that a lifeline should have been strung across the river.

“It is very difficult to see why a simple precaution of this sort particularly in regard to totally inexperienced men had not been made a regulation and I hope it will be made a universal one so that any future mishap can be avoided,” he said.

He returned a verdict of “drowned while carrying out a military exercise”, and their bodies were sent to their home communities across the north for burial.

There the story ended until the 1990s when local historians felt the need to commemorate the site of the disaster. They were led by Charles Dick, of Felton, who had himself been captured at Dunkirk and survived the whole war as a prisoner in Poland. He was a miner, a tattooist, a poet, a cartoonist and a joiner, so he made a wooden cross decorated with his poem in time for the 50th anniversary.

Burnett Seyburn lats a wreath on the memorial stone for the Guyzance river tragedy where DLI soldiers lost their lives on a training exercise.

The Darlington & Newton Aycliffe branch of the DLI Association, led by Burnett Seyburn, was also aware of the story – one victim was from Evenwood and another from Ferryhill. In 2002, Burnett acquired a lump of stone from his local Asda, when its days in a promotional campaign were over, and the supermarket helped with the transport costs.

In 2004, it was unveiled on the wooded riverbank high above the fast-flowing River Coquet where, on January 17, 1945, those ten unfortunate kids had been so cruelly robbed of their futures.

Maurice Peddelty's headstone in Evenwood cemetery. He had grown up in Copeland Row in the village, and his father, George, was a miner. Picture courtesy of Kevin Richardson

Those who lost their lives at Guyzance:

L-Cpl Mark Fredlieb, 18, chemist, of Sheffield.
Pte Norman Ashton, 18, amusement park attendant, of Castleford.
Pte Percy Clements, 18, shipyard slinger, of West Hartlepool.
Pte Edwin King, 18, apprentice pulp maker, of Todmorden.
Pte Kenneth Lee, 18, butcher, of Bradford.
Pte Alexander Leighton, 18, windowcleaner, of Annfield Plain.
Pte Maurice Peddelty 18, clay differ, of Evenwood.
Pte John Wilson, 18, warehouseman, of Newcastle.
Pte Ronald "Bud" Winteringham, 18, apprentice butcher, of York.
Pte Alfred Yates, 18, shop assistant, of Dean Bank, Ferryhill.