Memorial to a small boy

THEY shall not grow old, as always we are reminded, but how did the name of Joseph Leng, just seven, come to be on a war memorial in Shildon?

Why, more intriguing yet, is that tragic little lad buried in a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in France, his white Portland stone memorial identical to the thousands of the fallen who lie with him?

The questions have been much occupying the internet, and have led to some tenacious detective work by retired Durham police officer John Malcolm. Still more questions remain.

Joseph, that sad-faced little boy in the Eton collar, drowned on October 2, 1919, while he and his mother were visiting his father, also Joseph, a Sapper stationed in the Calais area.

“It must have been an amazing adventure for them,” supposes John Malcolm, now in Newton Aycliffe.

“These days you can just pop over to France in a couple of hours, but for a working class family after the First World War it must have seemed like the other side of the world.

“I wonder if, then as now, railwaymen’s families got free passes and they were able to get across that way.”

But what were they doing there?

Was it usual for soldiers’ families to visit them on active service? Had their return been delayed by a railway workers’ strike gripping Britain?

His father was employed at Shildon Wagon Works, one of many called to the colours. Two of his colleagues took little Joseph for a boat ride; he died when the craft overturned.

The memorial, formerly in All Saints churchyard in Shildon, now stands opposite the town’s railway institute.

That’s where John and Joyce Malcolm spotted Joseph’s name, on a plinth below 124 others, after leaving a dance. Both had an interest in the First World War. John had previously researched the war memorial in his native Coxhoe. “It just seemed so extraordinary,” says John. “I’d heard of one or two youngsters’ names on war memorials, but no one as young as this.”

Joseph’s father’s name is also among 198 survivors, and 30 dead, on a brass plaque inside the railway institute.

John’s researches were much helped by Percy Leng, a relative who lived nearby, who looked into the institute for a pint and who provided the family photograph. He died a few weeks ago.

John and Joyce Malcolm visited the grave in Sangatte cemetery while on a Durham Light Infantry Association trip in 2006 to mark the 90th anniversary of the Somme. They placed a poppy cross, others said short prayers and John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields.

In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

“It was very poignant. There were tears in my wife’s eyes,” says John. “It was almost unreal, a little boy among so many men.”

Also in Sangatte, he points out, is the grave of Sergeant Harold Collison DCM, from Middlesbrough, a military policeman who was the victim of the only First World War officer executed for murder. John Paterson, a second lieutenant in the Essex Regiment, had resisted arrest after deserting.

He was executed by firing squad in September 1918.

The Northern Echo appears to have carried nothing of Joseph Leng’s death, much of the available newsprint at the start of October 1919 given over to the railwaymen’s strike. In Shildon, we reported, neither passenger nor mineral trains had run for a week and Shildon Lodge colliery was at a standstill. Strikers met daily in the Wesleyan schools.

Hardship was particularly felt in Sunderland, another report added, because the rabbits had got wise and started burrowing more deeply.

John Malcolm had read about young Joseph’s death in the Western Front magazine, the article headed “The youngest burial”. In 2006, he wrote a piece for the Durham Bugle, the magazine of the DLI Association.

Durham Bugle editor Donald Mc- Donald, to whom many thanks for the help, admits his own fascination.

“I was very surprised when this first came in. I’d not heard of anything like it, either on a war memorial or in a war cemetery.”

DLI Association secretary Kevin Storey was equally surprised. “It’s unique for one so young,” he says.

“I’ve certainly never heard of a small boy on a war memorial.”

Joseph Leng senior returned to Shildon and is believed to have become organist at All Saints church, now closed. His son, for whom the great adventure so sadly ended, lies in a foreign field, perhaps the only war grave among hundreds of thousands to carry a familiar scripture.

“Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

The end of the first air mail

ON the day that Joseph Leng drowned, the pilot was also killed when a plane crashed in the centre of Newcastle. It was the end of the first air mail.

The pilot, identified as Lieutenant Sheppard, was flying with just 320 letters from London to Newcastle – “aeroplane post,” the Echo called it – in an attempt to beat the rail strike.

Approaching the aerodrome on the Town Moor, he realised that he was out of petrol and tried to land at St James’ Park, Newcastle United’s football ground, then rather less massively enclosed than now it is.

Just yards from the ground, however, the plane clipped the corner of a building in Strawberry Place, broke a wing and immediately crashed to the ground. Lieutenant Page, the observer, escaped with nothing more than a shaking. Clearly he was conscious of the maxim that the mails must get through. Within an hour of the crash, added the Echo, the letters had been delivered.

The following day saw a crash on the Town Moor itself, a plane – “one of the big machines used to take members of the Cabinet to France” – badly damaged on landing. The pilot and two women passengers escaped with shock. The railway strike was settled two days later amid much rejoicing, a front page headline in the Echo catching the mood of a grateful nation Doxologies sung in church,” it said.

A really friendly place

A DINNER next week marks the 200th anniversary, the happy and extraordinary survival, of the Askrigg Friendly Society. Doubtless it will be as amicable as it will convivial.

Askrigg’s in Wensleydale – stone built, stoical, semi-secret. The Askrigg Equitable, Benevolent and Friendly Society, fully to garland it, was formed in March 1809 to look after those in need – especially unable to work. It proved a good insurance.

Dr Christine Hallas’s history, published nine years ago, was called In Sickness and in Health. It summed it up quite nicely.

Initially 25 men joined, paying 3/6d a quarter and receiving seven shillings a week (for a limited period) when ill in bed. By 1861, it was able to invest £1,400 in the North Eastern Railway Company.

The society also paid death benefits, thus avoiding the posthumously dreaded prospect of a pauper’s funeral. When poor Nathan Clapham’s wife died in 1887, aged just 24, £4 10s paid for a funeral officially described as “impressive”.

Christopher Heslop, a joiner from Redmire, had paid £4 12s 6d when he died in 1869 and received £22 8s in benefits. Samuel Halton, a labourer, paid £5 17s 7d and was £60 to the good.

Still it flourishes, Friendly Society membership a frequent common denominator in the affectionate obituary pages of the Darlington & Stockton Times.

“An honest gentleman, quiet and peaceful, and a member of the Askrigg Friendly Society”… “Supported Everton and Askrigg, member of the Askrigg Friendly Society”… “Used to shout through the loud speaker on children’s sports days and was secretary for 20 years of the Askrigg Friendly Society.”

Activities have often been social, too, the column’s old friend Malcolm Stonestreet, a former vicar of those parts, oft cast in the role of Friendly giant.

Askrigg Feast continues under its aegis, dale folk marching down the street wearing white or blue rosettes depending on status as “honorary” or “ordinary” member.

Then as now, the centre of it all is the Kings Arms, the pub where they filmed All Creatures. It’s where the bicentennial dinner will be held on Saturday, March 7.

GOODNESS knows how he came to feature in the column in the first place, but there is more on former Sunday Night at the London Palladium host Don Arrol.

It had been supposed that Arrol, a Glaswegian spotted by Palladium producer Val Parnell while in summer season at Newquay, had been killed in a car crash on the A66 west of Scotch Corner.

After much research, intrepid Darlington film buff Tony Hillman can prove that it wasn’t so.

On the Scottish Music Hall Society’s website, it’s reported that Arrol died of a massive heart attack. The Times obituary confirms that he died in London on May 13, 1967, aged 38.

He was best remembered, apparently, for the giant raincoat in which frequently he appeared on stage.

“After years of toiling in the backwaters of show business,” notes the website, “he didn’t live long to enjoy his chance of fame.”

…and finally, that splendid photograph at the top of the page was taken late on Tuesday afternoon by Brian Harrison, Tyne Tees Television’s sports editor when it went on air in 1958.

The day before Lent, it shows what appears to be a cruciform cloud formation above the church of St Mary and St Cuthbert in Chester-le-Street.

“The sign of the cross above the ancient parish church? Whatever next?” he muses.

Brian’s also a committee member of Chester-le-Street bowls club, the bowlers a bit flummoxed the other day to find a 14ft dinghy in the clubhouse.

Another portent? “I think the council may know something about that one,” he says.