Just about every family in Huddersfield knew someone who was killed in World War One ... after all, the conflict claimed the lives of almost 3,500 men from the town.

But some felt it even more keenly than others.

Four brothers from the Gallagher family enlisted. James Gallagher, 38, was killed in the Dardanelles and left five children. Timothy Gallagher was killed in 1915 in Belgium, leaving a wife and one child. John Willie Gallagher was killed in 1918 and the only survivor was Bernard Gallagher who had an artificial eye so had been turned down for the army but was eventually accepted after he reapplied six times.

Yet another family – the Earnshaws from Meltham – was far luckier. Becket, King and Frederick Earnshaw all joined the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment at the start of the war and all returned home safely although Frederick became deaf as a result of the noise of the guns.

Stories from the front were grim … and amazing. It turns out a Huddersfield lad who was only 15 was out there fighting. Jack Gibson from Primrose Hill suffered gas poisoning and was invalided to hospital in Le Havre.

He wrote home to say: “It is terrible out here. You cannot explain what it is like to see your comrades killed by your side and have to tread over them. It is more like murder than anything else.”

These stories have been revealed by Huddersfield author Vivien Teasdale who has written a book called Huddersfield In The Great War which shows how the town rallied around its troops out on the frontline.

But what many people won’t realise is that there were Huddersfield people living in Germany when war broke out … and they were stuck there.

Communication was painfully slow back then and it wasn’t until December 1914 that Huddersfield Mayor Joseph Blaimires received a postcard from Barrack No 3 Englanderlager at Ruhleben Spandau internment camp in Germany.

The Huddersfield inmates – who included William Kemp, James Blackburn, Henry Shaw, Harold Eastwood, J Douglas Walker, William Clarke, John Dyson and Wilson Cockroft – had sent the card to let everyone know they were alive and well.

The following year a list of prisoners at the camp was obtained which also included three brothers – Henry, Fred and George Emmett from Rock Villa in Scissett – and G Crosland, son of Guy Crosland who was a well-known golfer in the area. The British government sent allowances of five shillings per week to the men so they managed to set up shops and businesses within the camp and were largely left to their own devices by the German guards.

Other Huddersfield people wanted to ‘do their bit’ and although women could not join the army and go to fight, they sometimes ended up on the frontline through their work in hospitals.

One was Sister Ada Stanley who trained as a nurse at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and then joined the Territorial Force Nursing Service and was sent to the Dardanelles in July 1915.

But when she returned to England on HMS Mauretania escorting wounded soldiers she developed dysentery and was taken to the military hospital at Netley near Southampton where she died and was later buried at Armitage Bridge.

Nurse Evelyn Faulder was a daughter of Joseph Faulder, one of the founders of woollen merchants Stothard and Faulder which had a large warehouse and offices at the corner of John William Street and Brook Street in Huddersfield town centre.

She joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) which provided ambulance support to the Red Cross. She served in the war zone between 1916 and 1919 and earned the Military Medal for ‘gallantry and conspicuous devotion to duty.’

An ammunition dump had been set on fire by enemy bombs and five FANY members rescued the wounded.

The war even brought danger from the skies on the home front. With the fear of bombing from Zeppelins, lighting was restricted at night and when one reached inland as far as Penistone air raid precautions were issued for Huddersfield ‘to be plunged into darkness when danger threatens.’

The war did though help Huddersfield’s economy. In the early part of 1914 trade had been declining and some mills had gone onto short time or even laid workers off.

But this soon changed as the mills secured orders for cloth for uniforms, not just for the British army but from Russia, Belgium and France too.

At the beginning of 1915 200 miles of cloth were ordered from Lockwood’s at Black Rock Mills in Linthwaite for blue-grey French uniforms worth £120,000 and The Times described the Colne Valley as the ‘Valley of Khaki’. The Factory Act regulations were relaxed so women and children could work longer hours. In 1918 Huddersfield’s contribution to the war effort was recognised by a visit from King George V and Queen Mary who visited some of the textile mills.

Huddersfield In The Great War is published by Pen And Sword Books and available for £8 on the website www.pen-and-sword.co.uk .