A view from Cold Moor to Garfit Gap. The row of sheds belong to the industrial pheasant rearing farm at Whingroves, a shining example of rural diversification, if one defines success as raising battery-bred birds for folk to shoot. In 1896, however, it was just another typical mixed farm on the North York Moors, run by Isaac Garbutt, a man from a family so rooted in Bilsdale that their name has been cluttering up the parish registers since the 16th century. That year, Isaac’s wife Mary produced yet another mouth to feed, a boy christened John William, though inevitably everyone called him Jack.
It was a large and exhausting family. Isaac and Mary had 12 children, because what else was there to do after dark. No doubt Jack and his countless siblings scrambled over the Wainstones boulders when they were not busy serving as unpaid farm labour.
Childhood, of course, was a brief interlude before real life crushed any remaining spirit. Jack began work young as an agricultural labourer, which meant insecurity, drudgery and poverty, with the added excitement of seasonal unemployment. He made a brave attempt to better himself by becoming a policeman, but history had other ideas. The First World War arrived, and Jack, aged just 18, found himself volunteering for the Royal Field Artillery.
For four splendid years he endured the many horrors of the Western Front. On 21st March 1918, as the Germans launched their Spring Offensive in a last attempt to snatch victory, Jack was busy escorting an ammunition wagon at Epehy, east of Amiens, just in time to come under heavy shell fire. That day, 7,485 British soldiers were killed, though only 978 were lucky enough to have a grave. Jack, tragically, was among the thousands whose bodies were never found. He is one of 14 Bilsdale men who were sacrificed in the Great War.
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