Leeds Pals

[1] The three sons of Francis Martineau Lupton - all educated at Rugby and Cambridge University - were killed during the Great War.

In December 1915 the Leeds Pals were deployed to Egypt to defend the Suez Canal from the threat of the Ottoman Empire.

On the first day on the Somme, 1 July 1916, the 31st Division attacked towards the village of Serre and the Leeds Pals advanced from a line of copses named after the Gospels.

The battalion was shelled in its trenches before Zero Hour (7.30 am) and when it advanced, it was met by heavy machine gun fire.

John Harris' novel Covenant With Death (Arrow Books Ltd., London, 1961) is a lightly fictionalized account of a private in the Sheffield City Battalion from their formation until the first day of the Battle of the Somme.