Memories in the River Stones
£18.00
The book focuses on a family of eight children, and their parents Annie and Smith Bell setting out their everyday experiences, as well as triumphs and tragedies. On 10th July, 1916 the family were to lose their youngest son, Donald Simpson Bell at the Battle of the Somme.
For his actions at Horseshoe Trench, and in the Battle for Contalmaison, he was to be awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery, with two other soldiers he led an attack on a German machine gun position that was pinning down the British Front line and in doing so saved the lives of many other members of the Yorkshire Regiments.
Description
The book focuses on a family of eight children, and their parents Annie and Smith Bell setting out their everyday experiences, as well as triumphs and tragedies. On 10th July, 1916 the family were to lose their youngest son, Donald Simpson Bell at the Battle of the Somme. For his actions at Horseshoe Trench, and in the Battle for Contalmaison, he was to be awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery, with two other soldiers he led an attack on a German machine gun position that was pinning down the British Front line and in doing so saved the lives of many other members of the Yorkshire Regiments.
An account is given of how the Yorkshire Regiments were formed in towns like Harrogate, and how they moved to the front line. It then goes on to set out pictures of life in the trenches as well as back home in Harrogate.
The book also shows how the sheer scale of the losses impacted on a small town of twenty thousand inhabitants as seen through the eyes of family records and accounts in local newspapers. The Simpson Bell family were prolific letter writers, and these letters as well as diaries were carefully stored and collected by family members to provide a moving record today. Every week letters from France, arrived at 87 East Parade in Harrogate where the family lived during the war years. The letters were read and shared with family and friends at the Imperial Café (now Bettys) in Harrogate. This tradition (of sharing family news) among members of the Simpson Bell family (at the Imperial) continued for the rest of their lives.
Donald Simpson Bell was not a soldier by choice. Rather, he was a teacher and professional footballer, playing for Bradford Park Avenue in the season that they were promoted to The First Division of English football. His family were Wesleyan Methodist, and his father Smith Bell was the choir master at Wesley Chapel, Harrogate for 30 years. The family loved music and the performing arts and his sister Nancy, and brother Billy were members of Leeds Festival Choir. The family were all good singers and in Harrogate were known as ‘the merry peal of Bells’.
Donald Simpson Bell’s final words were ‘I go into the hands of my maker’, and this gave great comfort to his family.
The book includes 60 family photographs, memorabilia and water colour paintings created by Major Roger Chapman, the former curator of The Green Howards Regimental Museum in Richmond, North Yorkshire.
The text has been written and edited by current members of the Simpson Bell family.
