EASTER Week of 1916 saw the Durham Pals waist-deep in water and thoroughly miserable.

Exactly 100 years ago Easter was three weeks later than this year, and so it was on April 20 – Maundy Thursday – that the volunteers of 18th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry were ordered into the trenches near Auchonvillers, in the Somme region of northern France. There they remained until Easter Monday.

It had rained or snowed almost continuously for weeks, ever since the Pals returned from the sunshine of Egypt in early March, and the frontline firing trenches were flooded.

Although the water was waist high in some trenches and knee-high in others, trench life continued with relentless rounds of sniper and mortar fire and night patrols into no-man’s land.

On that first night back in the trenches, Private Levi Sutton from Darlington was wounded by German trench mortars and subsequently died of his injuries.

The 36-year-old, from A Company, was born in Cockerton and had spent time working as an insurance agent and, despite being less than 5ft 8 inches tall, he had served with the 1st Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry.

In 1904, Levi married Mary Hannah Crosby and the couple had two children, Violet, who was ten when her father was killed, and Eland, who was four. At the outbreak of war, the young family were living at 86 Westmoreland Street, off North Road in Darlington.

As a 34-year-old veteran with previous military experience, Pte Sutton re-enlisted in his home town in September 1914 and joined the Durham Pals. On his death, his widow received a pension of 21 shillings a week to keep her and her two young children.

It was a terrible return to the trenches for the Durham Pals. However, the morning of Easter Sunday dawned bright and brought a change in the weather which reportedly lifted the Pals’ spirits.

At about 9pm on April 24, they were withdrawn from the trenches, having seemingly suffered no casualties over the four days despite the ever-present danger.

Under cover of night, the entire battalion was brought back down Railway Avenue, a trench which followed a two-mile course from the front to the reserve and the tiny village of Colincamps.

For four days, the Pals rested up at Colincamps to recover from the trenches and lick their wounds, but even here there were ever-present reminders of how precarious their life was.

Outside the village stood Sucrerie Military Cemetery, then a small and peaceful graveyard opened by the French in the summer of 1915 to bury their war dead. Unbeknown to the Pals, within months the cemetery would be enlarged as it became the final resting place of hundreds of their comrades at the Battle of the Somme, including Pte Sutton.

The battalion remained at Colincamps until the evening of April 28, when they were moved further back into the reserve and the village of Bertrancourt where, according to the battalion’s war diary, “there was a very fair hutment camp” and they could recuperate in relative comfort.

It provided an opportunity for the battalion to pay their respects to one of their fallen comrades.

On the morning of March 29, Pte Arthur Armstrong, a 26-year-old from Crook, had become the first of the Pals to be killed in France when he was hit by shrapnel from a bomb dropped by a German aeroplane as the battalion made its way towards the front.

When his funeral was held and he was laid to rest in Betrancourt, his friends were in the trenches and were unable to be at the service. Now stationed in the village, several of them were finally able to visit his grave in the village cemetery to pay their respects to their first fallen comrade.

IN Memories 273, we appealed for information about a picture of a First World War reunion. There wasn’t much information to go at – it was held in Durham in the 1960s – but, as usual, Memories readers came up trumps.

Marjorie Cook of Bishop Auckland even sent in a photocopy of the article in the Durham County Advertiser in which the photograph was included. On the photograph is her father, Arthur Cook, who won the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty”.

So, from the article, we know that this is a reunion of the 2/2 Northumbrian Field Ambulance Army Corps which was held on April 20, 1966 (by coincidence, almost 50 years ago to the day) in the Bridge Hotel, Durham. The hotel is the one beneath the viaduct and its distinctive first floor window, which is behind the veterans, can still be seen today.

The reunion was held to celebrate the 51st anniversary of the unit landing at Le Havre, in 1915, at the start of its war which was mainly spent tending to casualties from the Western Front.

Arthur Cook, is on the centre of the back row, resplendent in his medals. He was a Cockfield lad, who helped run the village football team, and went to war in the medical corps. He won his DCM for volunteering for a stretcher party which went out to collect an injured man under heavy shellfire.

“With absolute disregard for his own safety, he protected the injured man with his body, and although wounded, helped carried him to safety,” says the citation.

It is believed that Arthur threw himself over the injured man, sustaining shrapnel wounds himself.

“I’m very proud of him,” said Marjorie. So were the villagers of Cockfield, for they presented him with a gold watch and chain to mark his award.

Arthur, who died in 1969, was one of the older veterans, having been born in 1887. One of the younger chaps on the picture was Johnathon Hall, on the extreme left of the second row, who was recognised by his niece, Dorothy Greenwood.

“He was born in Page Bank in 1896, and he joined up after his older brother, George,” says Dorothy. “He was not old enough to enlist, but somehow managed it and went to look after George.”

In peacetime, he married Violet, had four children – Roland, Kathlyn, Leonard and Kenneth – and lived in Esh Winning, where he died in 1991.