A Bradford Pal: ‘It was Simply Heart Breaking’ – From Mill Town to the Battlefields of France

In 1914 the City of Bradford was the world’s leading manufacturer of fine woollen goods. On the outbreak of war, at the urging of the city’s wealthy industrialists, thousands of young men rushed to join the colours and within a matter of months two volunteer Pals Battalions were formed. Author John Broadhead, the son of a Bradford Pal, tells the story of the battalions and the part played by his father, George William Broadhead, a Town Hall clerk from Batley.  The author’s research was inspired by his father’s diary of 1916 which he handed to the author shortly before his death in 1980 saying, ‘Here lad you might be interested in this’. Like many old soldiers he rarely spoke about the war but the diary and the author’s use of official records, newspaper reports and memoirs reveal the stark horror of what faced the nation’s youth.  Few of the original Pals survived the war but George Broadhead’s luck held. In 1918 he married a French girl, then worked for eighteen years with the Imperial War Graves Commission in France before returning to his home town to resume his earlier career. This is a story of an ordinary soldier but a quite remarkable person.