The constant rain has transformed Airyholme Lane into a stream, though it mercifully spills into the field before it reaches the farmyard. I cannot help but wonder what the weather was like on this day in 1917. The miners from Roseberry Ironstone Mine would have trudged along this track to and from their shifts. Did they feel fortunate, knowing they were in a reserved occupation while many of their neighbours from the village were off fighting in France? Perhaps one of those miners was William Trembath. His eldest son, also William, had followed him into the mine, but was later called into service with the Lincolnshire Regiment. Conscription had been introduced early in 1916, and by the end of that year, young William would have turned eighteen, making him eligible for the army.
The Trembath family had its origins in the tin mines of Cornwall. In the late 1870s, they moved north to Yorkshire, seeking work in the ironstone mines. Here, the elder William was born, and like his father, he too became a miner. His son, William, was born in 1897 in Loftus, and the family eventually settled in Great Ayton, where the elder William worked as a plate-layer in the ironstone mines. Young William attended the British School in the village, growing up as one of eleven children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. It is likely that when he left school, young William joined his father in the mines.
By 1917, William had been recruited into a battalion that had been formed two years earlier. He likely joined them shortly before they were sent to the Somme front. Their first major engagement came early in the year during a disastrous assault on German positions at a quarry on the Hindenburg Line. Due to poor reconnaissance, it was thought that the quarry was lightly defended, but the area held far more German troops than expected. Within the space of an hour, 259 men were either dead, wounded, or missing. For William, it was a harsh introduction to the realities of war.
Later that year, in September, his battalion took part in the Third Battle of Ypres. Their objective was Polygon Wood, a landscape ravaged by relentless shelling. As part of a larger offensive, they attacked enemy positions on the 26th of September, on this day 107 years ago. The Lincolnshire battalion captured a point north of Dochy Farm with relatively little resistance, aside from bursts of machine-gun and rifle fire. Fifty Germans in a block-house surrendered. The battalion then set about consolidating their newly won ground, linking and deepening shell craters to form trenches. Their greatest losses came towards the end of the action, when German artillery bombarded the pillboxes that the Lincolnshires had seized. The War Diary recorded that the men had shown the highest gallantry throughout. Though the battle was a success, it came at a cost. Among the sixteen men who were killed that day was William Trembath, the young soldier who had been at the front for barely seven months.
William’s death left his wife, Ada, widowed after what must have been a brief, wartime marriage. He was just twenty years old, his life cut short by the Great War. His name is inscribed, along with nearly 35,000 others, on the Tyne Cot Memorial at Ypres, a lasting tribute to his sacrifice.
Source: From researches carried our by members of the Great Ayton History Society
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