Frank NORTH

41831, Private. b. 1894, Clayton d. Thu. 21st March 1918 (aged 24).

The North family in 1911 were living at 10 Smithy. The family was Franks father Benjamin and his wife Susannah and three boys, John, Frank and Milton and a daughter Ellen. Franks father, Ben worked as an Electric Tram Driver, one of the new occupations that Bradford provided other than the plentiful work in woolen mills. By 1911 census, Frank and Milton had sisters Elizaveth and Alice and a brother Alfred and their father Ben was now a Tram inspector and they were at 32 Highfield Road in Clayton Heights. By 1911 eldest brother John North was married and with two children. Frank joined his dad on the trams working as a conductor.

A peer of Leslie Midgley, Frank had joined up just weeks before Leslie on 25th March 1916 into the same battalion, the 10th West Yorkshire’s and the two would train and eventually be sent to France together. They would also die within days of each other.

Frank did ten months training at the West Yorkshire’s training ground at Clipstone before being posted to France in January 1917 where he was joined two months later by his pal Leslie Midgley.

Both men fought in the atrocious wet conditions of 1917, the 10th battalion seeing action at the Arras Offensives and Passchendaele and both men additionally surviving the harsh winter of 1917 and early 1918.

What neither of them expected was the German Spring Offensive, and on the 21st March, Frank was at the very front of the trench system as the German Army began to pour out towards them in extremely large numbers. Frank was one of the many thousands of Allied troops who were swept away in this tide of German uniforms, and like so many, his body sunk into the mud never to be seen again. Leslie Midgley died three days later.

Frank is commemorated at the Arras Memorial, at Faubourg-D´Amiens Cemetery, Arras

Frank and Milton’s father Ben and Mum Susannah are, in 1939 aged 75 and 73 still living at 32 Highgate Road. Franks younger Brother Alfred L North had married Lily and was in 1939 living at Bradford Road, Shipley and following his fathers footsteps as an Electric Trolley Bus Driver, it looks as if they had 3 children.