THE Westmorland Mercury and Times of August 6, 1915 records “Kendal’s Magnificent Roll of Honour” and counts 1,370 men with the colours, this being 63 per cent of the men of fighting age of the borough.

The following week the same newspaper continues “no part of the country has responded more loyally than this street. Captain French Lane is not a long thoroughfare, but on counting up the young men who have gone on service the total is somewhere about 100.”

It is impossible to know how accurate that number is. The lane was much more populous then, with levels of accommodation which would not be tolerated today.

What is certain is that at least 18 men who had lived on the lane were killed or died during the Great War.

The first of these was Pte John Wilson, of No 39, an ex-employee of Croppers mill, who was serving with the 6th Battalion of the Border Regiment.

Newly arrived in the Dardanelles, he died in his brother’s arms.

In a letter home to his mother, Flora, Albert writes: ‘We were in reserve and sleeping, when about 1am John shouted “Bert, I am shot”. He only lived a few seconds, and all he said was “Goodbye Bert, I am dying, do not trouble yourselves”.’

The peninsula is the final resting place of two more inhabitants of the lane, Richard Shepherd, a general labourer, serving with 6th Border, and Miles Thompson, who had worked at Oakbank mill, and who was serving with the East Lancashire Regiment.

1916 was a bad year for the lane. Five men died in the months of July until November, all victims of the Battle of the Somme.

Among them were the Gibson brothers of Rock View. James was a moulder at Day’s foundry; Thomas a builder, working for Penningtons.

The following year was worse, the war that year claiming the lives of six more men.

Among them was Harry Postlethwaite, who had worked for K shoes in his youth. He served with the Royal Irish Rifles and was killed in Belgium on August 8.

He now lies in Tyne Cot Cemetery at Zonnebeke.

This has the sad distinction of being the largest British military cemetery in the World. No fewer that 11,956 men are buried here - of these 8,369 are the graves of those whose identity is not known, and whose stones carry the inscription ‘Known Unto God’.

In such a crowded, closely-knit community, the reports of death and wounding would surely have affected every family on the lane. This was long before the days of trauma counselling.

By a terrible coincidence, the last of the men to die was Albert Wilson, John’s brother.

Albert was serving with 5th Border in the Army of Occupation. He was home on leave from Germany to visit his mother Flora, and died on February 11, 1919 in Kendal Voluntary Aid Detachment hospital of acute bronchitis - one of the millions of victims of the Spanish ‘flu pandemic.

Few of us who now walk the length of Captain French Lane can realise the pain and sorrow for its inhabitants of 100 years ago.