The life and times of Heworth's Private Samuel Buttress - just one of countless young men who gaves their lives in the 'Great War'

Samuel was just one of the countless young men who made the ultimate sacrifice in that colossal waste of human life that was the First World War. His wasn't even a particularly heroic death. A private in the West Yorkshire Regiment he died in Calais in April 1916 of pneumonia while on his way home on leave. We don't know how he caught it. "But we'd have to assume it was being in the trenches," says local historian Ralph Peacock, 83, who has been researching details of Samuel's life and death as part of a project for the Tang Hall Local History Society.

Samuel was 31 years old when he died. He left a wife, Rose Hannah; a son, Harry; and a daughter, Susan. A photograph shows the family all together. Samuel is a handsome man in uniform, with a bristling army moustache. His wife is a neat, competent-looking woman, who in the photograph is sitting in a hard-backed chair wearing a severe black dress.

Local historian Ralph Peacock with a photo of Private Buttress and his family

A letter Ralph has from Samuel's granddaughter Hilary, who now lives in Appleby-in-Westmoreland, sheds more light on his army service.

In his letters home to family, Samuel had written about his involvement in the famous' Christmas truce', Hilary wrote. "He did not mention football. What he did say was that he and the German he met showed each other pictures of their wives and families, and he was surprised the enemy was a nice ordinary family man like himself and not a monster as he had been led to believe."

Samuel also left a notebook, which is now in possession of the York Army Museum. It isn't a diary, stresses Mr Peacock, just a collection of notes: names of men he served with; instructions he had to remember, such as the parts of a lock.

Private Buttress's notebook

He's buried in the military cemetery in Calais, but is also commemorated in Holy Trinity Church, Heworth; on a headstone at Osbaldwick Church; and in the King's Book of York Heroes at York Minster. And, of course, in the hearts of family members like Hilary.

Samuel's son, Harry, was also to go off to war, a generation after his father. As a child, he lived with his mother and sister in Heworth. Harry's mother Rose Hannah became housekeeper for the Vicar of Heworth. And, because Harry himself had a good singing voice, he was soon part of the church choir. He was taught to read by his elder sister Susan, and after going to Archbishop Holgate's School, he trained as a teacher.

He was called up as an RAF PE instructor in 1939. Unlike his father, he survived his war, and went on to become a teacher in York, a magistrate, and chairman of Flaxton Rural District Council. He married, had a daughter - the Hilary whose letter Mr Peacock has - and died in 1994 at the good age of 81. He is buried in Osbaldwick in the same grave as his wife, Betty.

Samuel Buttress is one of more than 30 men from the Heworth/ Tang Hall area who died in the First World War, and whose names and details are being gathered together by the Tang Hall Local History Group. The men whose details have been collected range from Private Joseph Cox of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, an Irishman who was living in Lawrence Street when he enlisted and was killed in action at Passchendaele in October 1917, aged 25; to Driver James King of the Mechanical Transport Section of the Army Service Corps. Driver King, from Lansdowne Terrace, was killed by a shell in October 1918 after just four months service at the front. He left a widow and seven children.

Private Joseph Cox

The Project, as the history that Mr Peacock is working on is called, resulted in an exhibition last year. The details of the men whose lives have been researched will now be held by the local history group.

The reason for doing the project was quite simple, says Mr Peacock. "We wanted a record of servicemen from Tang Hall and Heworth who died in the Great War."

Quite right too.

Driver James King