Private Harry Salkeld
21772 Royal Army Medical Corps
36th Field Ambulance
Lived at 800 Padiham Road

Andrew,

It was with much interest I found your site on Burnley in the Great War recently and in particular to see my late grandfathers name appear! Although he wrote a book about his experience in the war, strangely enough he doesn't say where he enlisted or returned to after returning. I had a feeling it was in the north west as he later met his future wife who lived at Sale near Manchester but it was obviously in Burnley that he enlisted. The book he wrote (The Vital Year) is fascinating but lacks some details and raises many questions that I wish I had asked him while he was still alive. Sadly he passed away 6 weeks before my wedding in 1995 at the age of nearly 97. I have his original trench map which is still in excellent condition considering what it has passed through and also a later map which plots the route that he took when being taken to Germany as a prisoner of war. I'm not even sure which battle he fought in though he was in, or near the village of Freniches when he was taken prisoner on the 21st March 1917.

He left the UK on board for France on La Marguerite from Southampton. Upon his release he came home from Stettin on board HMS Coventry which at that time was 'brand new' and arrived at Hull before being de-mobilised and returning to family on Boxing Day 1918.

During the Second War he was an Air Raid Warden in Bristol and there again saw much devastation through heavy bombing and some witnessed further remarkable events. Later he became a minister and Pastor of a chapel in Bradford-on-Avon before moving to Chippenham in the early 1970's.

(courtesy of his grandson James Salkeld)