AN OUTSTANDING example of firms’ generosity was shown at Keighley Parish Feast in 1920, when Messrs Hey and Co and John Wright (Ingrow) Ltd treated 60 of their employees to a nine-day trip to the recent battlefields of France and Belgium.
Their party followed an ambitious itinerary, taking special saloons to London, sailing from Newhaven to Dieppe, and sightseeing in Paris before a comprehensive tour which included Amiens, Albert, Poziers, Bapaume, Arras, Loos, Neuve Chapelle, Menin, Hooge and Ypres. Every employee was also given spending money.
“Heroic exploits were recalled by the sight of dug-outs, saps, listening posts, shell-holes, and other relics of the war,” said one of their number, “while the cemeteries with hundreds of white crosses remained to the memory of those who fell.”
Here, a group of Ingrow sightseers stands in a shell-ravaged landscape, best described by the Mayor of Keighley, who had visited the French fortresses of Verdun earlier in 1920: “No attempt has been made to do anything to this battlefield... not a tree is left standing, where once were forests. Today, the scene is an abomination of desolation.”
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