ENEMY fire was not the only danger facing British servicemen when they served in France during the First World War.
Keighley man George Holbrough was a long way from the frontlines when he worked the Pas de Calais with the Royal Engineers.
The duties were backbreaking for the former railway goods porter in a quarry were men worked in shifts 24 hours a day to supply limestone for essential military roads and railways.
Sapper Holbrough, born in Gloucestershire in 1877, was killed when a stone block fell on him.
George first worked on the railways in Goole, but by 1915 when he signed up with the army he was a boilermaker in Keighley.
Suffering from defective vision, he was assigned to a Labour battalion and by 1917 was working with the 329th Quarry Company of the Royal Engineers.
The men were not given military training, and were not even issued rifles: their task was to produce crushed stone and aggregate to build roads and ballast for railway tracks.
On October 11, 1918 George was working in a hole when a piece of stone rolled from 10 feet above him onto his back.
He died three days before the war ended, from a fractured spine and a bladder infection.
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