“THE great offensive on the Western Front has begun at last,” reported the D&S Times of July 8, 1916.

“Perhaps it does not exactly follow the lines that most people anticipated, but in these matters even the masters of war are learning something new day by day, and it was not reasonable to expect that the hammer strokes of the great British force now under the direction of Sir Douglas Haig would at all resemble the resounding blows we struck in other days.”

The paper was reporting on the events of exactly 100 years ago today – the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest day in British military history.

The July 8th edition was, of course, a full week after the Great Push had begun, and the paper appears not to have known of the full horror of what had occurred – although its readers would not have to peer between the lines too much to see that the operation hadn’t resulted in a quick, knock-out victory.

In fact, the main war headline was about the Battle of Jutland, the greatest sea battle of the war which had begun on May 31. At first, the British losses at Jutland appeared so poor that the Government considered suppressing them, but now, a month later, news that the German losses were greater than had been previously known meant that this immense naval encounter off Denmark – involving more than 100,000 men – was not as disastrous as initially thought.

As for the victims of the Somme, it wasn’t until the July 15th edition that their stories started seeping into print.

Those early stories included that of Lt Col Robert Aspinall, a professional soldier who, at the start of the war, had been in command of the 3rd Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment – the Richmond Special Reserve – which was then camped at Barnard Castle. He was immediately instructed to recruit his own battalion – the 11th at Darlington – and at the Somme, the 47-year-old old Etonian led the Cheshire Regiment over the top.

The D&S had seen a letter from his military servant, who wrote: “He led his men over the parapet. They say he was the first over, and he went over singing.”

Not that all the news of men from the Somme was without hope.

For instance, that July 15th edition told of 2nd Lt CC Frank, a banker from Kirbymoorside, who had been reported missing. His captain had an inkling that he had been captured. “When we got the order to retire from a captured German trench,” he wrote to the family, “2nd Lt Frank was one of the last to do so. His men lost touch with him in the darkness and he got left behind. It has been reported that a party of Germans retired through in his direction under the cover of darkness, and it may be that he fell into their hands.”

The hope may have been justified - he isn’t listed among the fallen on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website.

The July 15th paper also includes a report of the funeral of Pte Maxwell Whittaker, in Brompton, near Northallerton. Pte Maxwell, formerly a linen-worker in the village, had enlisted at the start of the war and had been in France for 15 months in the build-up to the Somme.

On June 27, “when a call for volunteers was made to raid a German trench, he was one who responded, and he then received an injury to his spine from a shell bursting behind him”, said the report. He was taken to a field hospital in Boulogne and then to St George’s Hospital in London, where he died on July 10 undergoing an operation.

“A letter from a friend in London speaks of the magnificent courage with which he bore the great pain he suffered,” said the D&S. “The remains were brought to the deceased’s home at Brompton on Wednesday night, and were escorted from the station by a number of people, and every sign of sympathy.

“Pte Whittaker was the 12th soldier from Brompton who has sacrificed his life in the war, and he was the first to be buried at Brompton, the others having all been interred in France. As many of the young men of Brompton are fighting, the funeral appealed to most families, and it almost appeared as if all the houses had been emptied of their occupants in order to attend. The spacious old church was filled to overflowing, a large number not being able to obtain admission.”

St Thomas’ church was to become sadly used to such occasions – there were another five soldier burials after Pte Whittaker, and the role of the dead in the lychgate contains 17 names.

THE D&S of July 8, 1916, also contains a report of the identical deaths on June 30 – exactly 100 years ago yesterday - of identical twins from Thirsk. They were the Crossley twins, William and Leonard, of St James’s Green, who were privates in the King’s Royal Rifles, and they died near Ploegsteert, south of Ypres, in Belgium.

“Capt Worsley, their company commander, has written a kindly letter to the bereaved parents,” said the D&S. “He refers to the brothers as two of the best men in his company, saying that in the trenches and on fatigue parties they always stuck to their work in the most splendid way.”

William was a bricklayer and Leonard worked for ten years at Thirsk power station. William turned out for Thirsk Junction Cricket Club, while Leonard was described as a “steady bat and useful bowler” for Thirsk Victoria.

“As is the case with most twins, they were remarkably alike,” said the D&S, “so much so that on one occasion William took Leonard’s place at the power station without the manager being aware, though he came into contact with one brother in the morning and the other in the afternoon.”

So from the same egg, they were killed by the same shell.

They were in trenches in a wood and were killed instantly. Pte Scott, a Thirsk hairdresser who was with them in Flanders, said: “It was an awful night, and I shall not forget it for some time. I thought the shell was going to drop on the top of me – and I didn’t half crouch down – instead of which it went 10 or 15 yards further, killed them and wounded three others.”

The twins had last been home on Palm Sunday, April 16. “’Their last letter,’ said their mother to sympthathiser, “said that they were in the thick of it, and I was to be brave, as they had asked me. It was the one thing they always asked me – to be brave for their sakes and they would be for mine.’”

Capt Worsley’s letter concluded: “They died as they would have liked – together.”

STRANGE TANK: Another piece of historic metalwork that caught our cycling eye was on the site of an old linen mill at Brompton, near Northallerton. Brompton had long been a textile centre – 300 linenworkers were employed there in 1823 – but the opening of the railway in 1852 encouraged two larges mills to be built. They lasted into the 1950s, and although the last mill chimney came down in 2003, there is still a hotch-potch of mill buildings left, including this distinctive top, which was built by Robert Wood and Sons of Leeds in 1873. But what was it, and who was Robert Wood?