A WELL-known man of Ingrow died just months after he arrived on the frontline in France.

Keighley-born Douglas Rhodes was a young man employed by Ingrow tailor Mr Peacy when he enlisted early in 1916.

By November 13 he was a private serving with the 7th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment in trenches near Le Transloy.

The battalion’s war diary shows that there was no specific attack carried out on the day by either the British or German forces.

But there was enemy shelling which the diary reveals caused several casualties, and it is this that is thought to have killed Douglas along with four other men.

Only one of these men has a grave, the rest including Douglas simply having their names recorded on the memorial at Thiepval cemetery.

A month before Douglas was killed, his brother Hartley, also a private with the Yorkshire Regiment, was wounded and had to be treated at the Northumberland War Hospital at Gosforth.

Douglas was born in 1887 in Keighley, and spent some of his childhood with his family in Armley before moving back to Keighley where his father worked as a machine tool fitter.

Douglas was awarded the British War medal and Victory Medal.