John Sheen - Tyneside Irish

Thanks are due to the following: my wife Beverley for putting up with my obsession for many years. Jim and Mary Connor for their help in correcting my spelling and punctuation. The staff of the following Libraries: Melksham, Wiltshire where my research started, Durham City Library, Newcastle Central Library, Gateshead Central Library. The staff of the enquiries section of The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, in particular Esther Page for her untiring help. Sue Wood at Northumberland Record Office and The Newcastle Society of Antiquarians for allowing the reproduction of the Tyneside Irish recruiting poster. Department of Printed Books at the Imperial War Museum for permission to use illustrations from The 34th Divisional Memorial Book . The Keeper of Public Records at the Public Records Office, Kew.

All who loaned photographs, postcards etc from their collections: Andrew Brookes; J. Bratherton; Mrs D Henderson; Graham Stewart; Jimmy Winter; D. Bilton.

Martin Atwell for help with work on the nominal roll of the officers. Captain P H D Marr of The Fusiliers of Northumberland Museum for his help at the museum. Dr R T Swinburn to whom I owe a great deal of thanks for access to his fathers papers. Mr Hugh Arnold for the use of his fathers unpublished memoirs. Mr Patrick Arnold for the use of letters from Colonel Richardson and CSM Coleman to his father. Mr Brian Falkous for the use of Captain Robert Falkouss letters and photo album. Jim Lawson of BEAMISH MUSEUM photographic archives. Pamela Armstrong for the interviews with Michael Manley and Lew Shaughnessy. Bob Grundy for help in pinpointing locations of some official photographs. Battleground author Michael Stedman for photographs. Also all those who did not have a photograph of their relative but passed on anecdotes and information.

The following relatives who loaned photographs and documents

Also the many releatives who supplied photographs after publication of the First Edition, many of which are included in this edition.

Appendix I

GALLANTRY AWARDS TO MEMBERS OF THE TYNESIDE IRISH BRIGADE

Commemmorative certificate presented to Captain George Swinburne MC by the Tyneside Irish Committee.

The Victoria Cross

22040 Lance Corporal THOMAS BRYAN 25th Battalion

ARRAS 9 APRIL 1917

22040 Lance Corporal THOMAS BRYAN 25th Battalion

For conspicuous bravery during an attack. Although wounded this NCO went forward alone with a view to silencing a machine gun which was inflicting much damage. He worked up most skillfully along a communication trench, approached the gun from behind, disabled it and killed two of the team as they were abandoning the gun. As this machine gun had been a serious obsticale in the the advance to the second objective, the results obtained by Lance Corporal Bryan were very far reaching.

Lance Corporal Thomas Bryan was born in 1882, at Stourbridge in Worcestershire. By 1915 he was employed as a miner at Castleford, Yorkshire, where he lived with his wife and four children. He enlisted into a Reserve Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers in April 1915, and was drafted to a Service Battalion in France in December 1915. In April 1916 he fractured an ankle and was sent home, he was then drafted to the 25th (Service) Battalion (2nd Tyneside Irish) in December 1916. After being wounded in the right arm, during the action that brought him the award of the Victoria Cross, he was evacuated to hospital in Alnwick, where he made a good recovery.

On the 17th of June 1917, Lance Corporal Bryan was decorated with the Victoria Cross in front of 40,000 people at St James Park in Newcastle.