Kirkby Malzeard & Laverton
History
The Army Camp 1914-18
The Great War 1914-18 reached out to the smallest villages, as the War Memorials show. Some events leave little trace, and not everyone knows that there was a large Army Camp in the Park (the field behind Buzzards now).
The Northumberland Fusiliers were in training there, as were the overflow of Royal Engineers from Ripon.
The ladies of Kirkby did what they could to keep morale up. Mrs Harvey, the doctors wife, despite being in a wheelchair, was taken to the Methodist Chapel schoolroom to make tea for them, along with many ladies.
Mrs Ashby used to help, and got to know, a soldier called Jack Wood. She wrote to him until the end of the war, and got in reply the small cards they issued, saying ‘I am well’, and a handkerchief sachet. Whether he was killed or not she doesn’t know, but he used to come and stay next door when he was On Leave, and her father took him to Ripon Station at the end of it. ‘That was the last time I saw him.
13th Regiment, Royal Engineers in the Park