2nd LIEUTENANT PAUL JAMES CALVERT SIMPSON, 3rd BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY.

2nd LIEUTENANT PAUL JAMES CALVERT SIMPSON, 3rd BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY. KILLED IN ACTION 1st OCTOBER 1915 AGED 21

The Battle of Loos, fought during late September and early October 1915 was an utter defeat for the British Army. Fought between the spoil heaps of this coal mining area near to Lens in northern France, its only tangible result was nearly 60,000 British casualties. The British commander, Sir John French, lost his job because of his poor handling of the battle, but one Ilkley family lost their only son.

 Paul James Calvert Simpson was born in Leeds in 1894, the son of a stuff merchant John Simpson and his wife Edith. Before the war the family moved to Ilkley and lived in a house called Oak Mount on Albany Walk. Paul attended Ghyll Royd School in the town before becoming a boarder at St. Edward's School, Oxford in 1908.

James joined the army in October 1914 probably with the Inns of Court Officer Training Court, a popular choice for men who wanted a commission. The following year he was Gazetted as a 2^nd Lieutenant in the 3^rd Reserve Battalion Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He arrived in France on 1^st June 1915 and three days later at 8pm in the evening joined the 1^st Battalion of the Yorkshire Light Infantry at Ypres.

By September 1915 the battalion had moved south to the Loos are and on the 4^th October they were in the front line near the village of Vermelles facing a heavily fortified German strong point known as the Hohenzollern Redoubte. At 4.45am that morning the battalions A and D company left their trenches to attack this strongly defended enemy position which lay just 200 yards away. Without any covering British artillery barrage they were met by heavy machine gun fire from the ever vigilant German defenders. The British soldiers barely got half way across no man’s land before they were wiped out. It is said that their shattered bodies littered the battlefield for days. James was last seen wounded and bandaged heading back towards the British line.

2^nd Lieutenant James Simpson was presumed to have died during the disastrous attack and his body was never recovered. Today he is commemorated on the Loos Memorial to the Missing. and remembered by a plaque placed by his parents in the chapel of St Edwards School. In Ilkley he is also remembered with pride on the war memorial at St Margaret’s and on the town memorial on The Grove.